Deepening Cooperation on Medical Goods and Services Trade
the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, and the International Competition Network have published reports and recommendations on competition policy in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic (Goodwin and Barajas 2020; OECD 2020; UNCTAD 2020; ICN 2020).
COOPERATION BEYOND TRADE AGREEMENTS FOR GLOBAL HEALTH SECURITY The Multilateral Leaders Task Force on COVID-19 Vaccines, Therapeutics, and Diagnostics (“Multilateral Leaders Task Force”) has called on the international community to step up its response beyond trade by48
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Urgently closing financing gaps, including through up-front grant contributions to address the gap in the Access to COVID-19 Tools Accelerator (ACTA), discussed further below; Accelerating vaccine deliveries and vaccine sharing; Ensuring that countries have the diagnostics, therapeutics, and other tools they need, including oxygen, to manage the health crisis; Addressing supply chain bottlenecks to scale up production and deployment of vaccines, testing, and therapeutics; and Working with countries to address readiness issues, such as cold chain storage and distribution, so countries are prepared to deploy vaccines as soon as they are available.
These efforts call for enhanced cooperation between states, between states and nonstate actors, and between international organizations.
Cooperation between states International cooperation that contributes to global health security occurs in many domains beyond trade. WHO, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), and the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), to name just a few international organizations, all pursue activities that have a direct bearing on global health security. Extensive cross-country collaboration among scientists and researchers in developing new vaccines and therapeutics, cooperation among regulators, and new multilateral initiatives such as ACT-A and COVAX are examples of cooperation to combat the global pandemic. COVAX established a 10-nation Regulatory Advisory Group to provide feedback and guidance on COVID-19 vaccine development and activities. Numerous groups of experts were created to resolve technical issues pertaining to COVID-19 vaccine development projects (McGoldrick et al. 2022). These examples of cooperation, both formal and informal, complement the work of the primary multilateral agency charged with safeguarding global health: WHO.
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