The COVID-19 pandemic has pushed global vaccine manufacturing capacity to new limits and primed the pump for further expansion in regions like Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) to prepare for future pandemic risks. The region has mainly relied on imports, with only of total COVID-19 vaccine supply produced locally, which has made LAC vulnerable to nationalism, export bans, and shortages ..read more

Low- and lower-middle-income countries (LMICs) and international development organizations have implemented a wide range of interventions to improve the functioning of government-run supply chains for health products over the last few decades. These efforts have helped to improve the availability of drugs for HIV/AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis, and sexual and reproductive health, and of other donor-funded medicines ..read more

Never before has the health of the population been so front-of-mind for so many people. African countries continue to face multiple burdens with limited resources, and COVID-19 has brought a new awareness of how vulnerable health systems can be ..read more

The Omicron variant has rapidly become the dominant variant of COVID-19, with many low- and middle- income countries (LMICs) observing a rapid increase in cases. In this blog we argue that protecting healthcare workers, and health systems in general, is now an even higher priority. We propose three strategies that policy makers could implement immediately to achieve this goal ..read more

Remember when you first heard about the lead-water crisis in Flint, Michigan? Remember your outrage that America’s most vulnerable children were exposed to a dangerous, debilitating poison? Remember your disbelief that policymakers could allow this to happen, or other Americans could look away from the tremendous injustice ..read more

As of October 5, 2021, 15 African countries ratified the , entering into force the second specialized health agency of the African Union. The treaty struggled to get sufficient support for more than a decade after AMA was conceptualized at the 60 World Health Organizational Regional Committee for Africa session and more than two years after its adoption in February 2019 ..read more

“One Health” is a trans-disciplinary approach to human, animal, and environmental health. The model addresses key health challenges, including zoonotic and vector-borne disease threats, antimicrobial resistance (AMR), food safety and security, and the human health impact of pollution and climate change. The essence of One Health is interdependence: no one dimension can be addressed singularly. In other words, One Health simultaneously promotes a healthy ecosystem, a healthy community, and healthy people living sustainably ..read more

The reaction to COVID-19 has been record-breaking. Today we release a paper that reports on the development and rollout of COVID-19 vaccines in historical perspective, and it suggests a pattern of unparalleled, but still deeply inequitable, progress ..read more

As low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) seek to deliver universal health coverage (UHC), they are finding it necessary to prioritize which services to provide, to whom, and at what cost. Health technology assessment (HTA) is increasingly being used to help identify which treatments provide the best value for money but as the capacity for conducting HTA is limited in LMICs, policy makers often upon evidence from established international HTA agencies to inform their decisions ..read more

In the language of economists, opportunity cost refers to the return or other forms of benefit that we could have received, but gave up, to take another course of action . In mathematical terms, it is the difference between the utility of what we have chosen and that from the foregone choice. Or, in much simpler terms, its what’s given up when making a choice. A positive opportunity cost shows that we made a good decision ..read more