Defining the future of global health
By José Manuel Barroso, board chair, Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance and former president, European Commission
Collaboration, not competition, must shape our future health systems, and an integrated approach to global health will help us banish silos forever
the disruption caused by the pandemic led to a dangerous backsliding of routine immunisation programmes that prevent other global killers such as measles. We need to get these programmes back on track. Integrating the huge amount of resources, workforce and innovation that went into fighting the pandemic into these routine services needs to be our priority. This means building on the healthcare infrastructure that was so quickly established during the Covid-19 pandemic, to deliver routine immunisations more effectively. Tanzania’s polio campaign is a great example of how existing equipment, vaccines or health services can be leveraged to save money and ensure that missed opportunities for vaccination are reduced. REPURPOSING TOOLS It also means repurposing tools such as digital health apps and data visualisation dashboards to aid planning and data management for other immunisation programmes. Relationships established with community and religious leaders in the context of Covid-19 could be further leveraged to improve health literacy and awareness about the importance of other vaccines. Integration in health care can also go further than just immunisation. Framing vaccination appointments as opportunities to deliver additional healthcare services could not only boost Covid-19 vaccine uptake but strengthen public health more broadly. It could also cut out some of the administrative burdens associated with these programmes.
I n February 2022, a year and a half after Africa was declared free of polio, a case of paralytic polio was confirmed in Malawi. The country and its neighbours responded by increasing surveillance and launching immunisation campaigns. To support these efforts, Tanzania needed additional vaccine carriers – containers to keep vaccines refrigerated during transportation. The country had already requested 3,000 carriers to support the delivery of Covid-19 vaccines. So Tanzania’s Ministry of Health rapidly coordinated with Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance and UNICEF, arranging for 1,000 of these vaccine carriers to be redeployed for use in the polio campaign, with the cost of airlifting them covered by the buffer built into the country’s COVAX agreement. This is what integration looks like, and it could be a game changer in boosting immunisation coverage across the Global South. Covid-19 clearly demonstrated the importance of vaccines in controlling infectious diseases. But at the same time,
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Health: A Political Choice – From Fragmentation to Integration
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