ACT-A Facilitation Council 6th Meeting (May 2021)

The ACT-A Facilitation Council held its 6th meeting on May 12th 2021.

Dr Fifa Rahman and Peter Ngola O’witi spoke in their capacity as Communities and Civil Society representatives during the meeting; Dr Rahman on barriers and strategies for increasing uptake and use of COVID-19 tools at country level and Peter O’witi on COVAX manufacturing task force.

We commend the United States on its decision to support a TRIPS waiver, which is the first step in scaling up access to these vaccines. We call upon the EU, the United Kingdom, Germany, Norway and others to follow suit – and to support a TRIPS waiver, not just for vaccines, but also for diagnostics and therapeutics. And while we wait for text-based negotiations at the WTO, tech transfer needs to happen now. We note that ‘voluntary tech transfer’ is listed as a mid-term response for the taskforce – we think this needs to be made an immediate priority. 

 – Peter Ngola O’witi

The recording of the livestream event is available in several languages here: https://www.who.int/news-room/events/detail/2021/05/12/default-calendar/6th-access-to-covid-19-tools-(act)-accelerator-facilitation-council-meeting You can also find information provided in pre-briefs at the same link.

Delivering an optimal COVID-19 response requires not just a public health approach, but a worker-justice and gender-justice approach, given that a majority of these workers are women. Community health workers can be crucial pieces of the puzzle to increase uptake of health technologies. Their value cannot be underestimated.

– Dr Fifa Rahman
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