NAIROBI, Kenya, May 22 — President Uhuru Kenyatta has urged the World Health Organization (WHO) to expedite pre-qualification of locally produced health products to ensure market access.
Addressing the 75th World Health Assembly on Sunday in Geneva, Switzerland, President Kenyatta said that the outbreak of the Coronavirus pandemic exposed the overdependence of developing countries to external markets, which he noted hampered, efforts to speed up vaccine production and supply.
The Head of State emphasized the need for collaboration among all stakeholders across the globe to address the existing gaps.
“To support the sustainability of new manufacturing initiatives, all stakeholders must come together to address the financing, coordinated technology transfer including affirmative action as well as market access for locally manufactured products,” he said.
He called on GAVI, the GlobalFund, and other major vaccine and essential medicines purchasing organizations to lead the way in prioritizing procurement of these locally manufactured health products from the countries they “serve most.”
President Kenyatta further pointed out that the COVID-19 pandemic has revealed the scale of inequality across the world noting that developing and least developed countries have been worst hit by the economic shocks and disruptions to global supply systems as a result of the pandemic.
He stated that no single country or sector has been spared from the devastating impacts of the virus adding that the developing and least developed countries, which are more vulnerable to economic shocks and disruptions to global Supply systems have been the worst hit.
“As each country plans its social and economic recovery strategy, it is important to focus our Collective attention on the very real risk and impact of an uneven economic recovery and what these portents for our long-term pursuit for ending inequality, amongst countries and peoples,” President Kenyatta said.
The Head of State added that the covid-19 pandemic has also brought about challenges that have washed away significant gains towards the realization of the Sustainable Development Goals.
He pointed out that the disruption of health service delivery has negatively impacted critical programs dedicated to maternal and child health, immunization, HIV, TB, and malaria, non-communicable diseases, amongst others.
“As the chairperson of the African leaders. Malaria Alliance, I would like to highlight that in 2020, there was a rise in global burden of Malaria with an estimated 627 thousand deaths and 241 million new cases of the disease,” President Kenyatta said.
He further called for greater investments in Innovation for Malaria, TB, HIV and other neglected tropical diseases to bring about new disease control approaches, diagnostics, medicines and other tools to boost the fight against the diseases in question.
President Kenyatta noted that reforms in finance and governance are vital in building the ability of governments across the world to respond to future pandemics.
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