A new report on reforming the global health architecture has called for stronger regional manufacturing, research and regulatory capacity, alongside more equitable access to health technologies and greater country ownership of health priorities.
The report, A Sovereign Future for Health, was launched on 21 September in New York during Full Circle: Resetting Global Development, One Year On, an Accra Reset event held on the margins of the 81st United Nations General Assembly.
Priscila Ferraz Soares, Deputy Executive Secretary of the Global Coalition for Local and Regional Production, Innovation and Equitable Access and Vice President for Production and Innovation in Health at Fiocruz, served as one of the co-chairs of the High-Level Panel on Reform of the Global Health Architecture and Governance, which developed the report.
She led the panel’s workstream on health sovereignty, spanning the full value chain from innovation and regulation through production, procurement and access.
The High-Level Panel brings together 23 global health experts and practitioners and was established under the Accra Reset to identify structural challenges in the current global health system and propose practical reforms. Its report sets out five political shifts and ten recommendations aimed at strengthening country-defined priorities, regional capabilities and global cooperation.
Among the recommendations are measures to support regionally led research and clinical trials; coordinate production, technology transfer, regulation and investment; strengthen procurement and supply systems; and incorporate equitable-access safeguards into global public goods.
The report also proposes stronger regional institutions and country-led mechanisms to align financing and international cooperation with national health priorities.
Report points to Global Coalition as platform for coordination
The report also specifically highlights the Global Coalition for Local and Regional Production, Innovation and Equitable Access in its discussion of how innovation, technology transfer and productive capacity can be better connected.
Rather than creating additional initiatives, it calls for stronger political convergence and coordination among existing efforts, identifying the Global Coalition as “an example of a candidate platform for coordination, coherence and collective action across the regional and global health-production ecosystem”, citing its convergence mandate and the breadth of expertise in its membership and governance structure.
Global Coalition’s Priscila Ferraz with Wamkele Mene, Secretary-General of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) Secretariat. Photo credit: Accra Reset Secretariat.
The same section points to existing technical capacities across regions, including Fiocruz, Brazil’s Health Economic-Industrial Complex and the PAHO Regional Production Platform in Latin America and the Caribbean.
These elements support the report’s broader approach of connecting research and innovation with technology transfer, regulation, manufacturing and demand, including through its recommendations to build an equitable health innovation ecosystem and increase investment in health-product manufacturing based on organised regional collaboration.
Leaders highlight local production and regional cooperation
During the launch, Ghanaian President John Dramani Mahama highlighted the importance of building local industrial capacity to manufacture essential medicines and strengthening regional market access.
Looking ahead to implementation of the report, he specifically invited strategic partners including Fiocruz in Brazil to collaborate in building “self-sustaining networks” connecting research, regulatory oversight, local manufacturing and reliable distribution.
Local production was also highlighted by other speakers. UN Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed pointed to the importance of producing medicines and vaccines closer to where they are needed, while WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus emphasized strengthening local production and supply-chain security.
Indonesia’s Minister of Health Budi Gunadi Sadikin, another co-chair of the panel, also highlighted regional cooperation in research, manufacturing, regulatory frameworks, market shaping and pooled procurement.
