Melissa Slogan

The Global Accountability Platform (COVID GAP) blog series. September 15, 2022 By Nellie Bristol   Ten countries in sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia will partner with a new public-private collaboration to scale up COVID-19 test and treat operations for high risk populations, the COVID Treatment Quick Start Consortium announced September 7. Working with an initial donation of 100,000 doses of Paxlovid from Pfizer, the consortium aims to integrate the program into long term systems that will offer a range of antivirals, including generic versions as they become available. When administered within five days of symptom onset, Paxlovid has been shown to significantly reduce hospitalization rates and deaths from COVID among patients 65 and older, regardless of vaccine status or prior infection. Older individuals, along with health workers, the immunocompromised, and those…

The Global Accountability Platform (COVID GAP) blog series. August 31, 2022 By Nellie Bristol   Infectious disease physician and Duke Professor Paul Pronyk remembers watching helplessly in the late 1990s as HIV-exposed patients entered a clinic in South Africa where he could not provide the quick diagnoses required to begin treatment. The availability of a new rapid test was a game changer, he said, allowing clinicians to immediately determine patient status and offer treatments to HIV-positive pregnant women to protect their babies. Now, as head of the newly established Duke-National University of Singapore (NUS) Medical School Centre for Outbreak Preparedness, he sees the possibility of similar breakthroughs on a wider scale in South and Southeast Asia. “I’ve never been so excited about the potential for things to transform in a very fundamental…

The Global Accountability Platform (COVID GAP) blog series. August 18, 2022 By Nellie Bristol While the world developed and distributed COVID-19 vaccines with unprecedented speed, the required emergency focus, coupled with response inequities and disruptions caused by the pandemic itself, took an enormous toll on health services. Health workers burned out, access to care fell, and childhood vaccinations suffered the largest sustained decline in 30 years. While the pandemic’s trajectory remains unknown, the latest wave appears to have peaked, creating space to consider how to incorporate COVID management into routine services, help health systems recover, and use lessons and resources to increase preparedness. To move toward those goals, the World Health Organization (WHO) and UNICEF are developing a document outlining considerations for incorporating COVID-19 vaccination into national immunization programs and primary care. Among priorities is helping…

The Global Accountability Platform (COVID GAP) blog series. August 11, 2022 By Katharine Olson and Nellie Bristol COVID-19 has disrupted clinical care and supply chains throughout the world, testing the resilience and flexibility of health systems everywhere. Services for those living with HIV/AIDS are no exception. UNAIDS’ “In Danger” report, released last week at the 24th International AIDS Conference (AIDS 2022), highlighted the devastating impacts the “multiple and overlapping” crises of the last two years have had on people living with and affected by HIV. New data included in the report show shrinking resources and growing inequalities that could result in millions of new infections and AIDS-related deaths if the current course is not reversed. Galvanized by the dire projections and using the lessons and innovations fostered by the pandemic itself, conference participants,…

The Global Accountability Platform (COVID GAP) blog series. August 3, 2022 By Talkmore Maruta, Senior Biosafety and Biosecurity Officer, Africa CDC and Nellie Bristol, COVID GAP With its rapidly growing urban population, high burden of infectious disease, and widespread gaps in health care capacities, Africa is particularly vulnerable to potentially devastating epidemics. The Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) has been on the forefront of addressing the issue. One important example is the Biosafety and Biosecurity Initiative, which aims to improve the handling of dangerous substances across the continent. Aided by new prominence given to biosafety and biosecurity as a result of COVID-19, working together with African Union Member States and supported by regional and international partners, Africa CDC has made significant progress toward a regional approach to…

The Global Accountability Platform (COVID GAP) blog series. July 21, 2022 By Nellie Bristol COVID-19 created a real-world stress test for pandemic preparedness and response. While there were some successes, many systems showed dangerous faults. The authors of national health emergency capacity assessments have analyzed those failings and incorporated lessons learned into revised tools, creating more comprehensive readiness benchmarks for future pandemics. But while the revisions expand the scope and rigor of preparedness measurements, most countries already were failing to meet standards laid out in earlier versions. Protecting lives and economies from the next crisis will take an influx of financial and technical resources, new approaches that break down capacity building into manageable tasks, and sustained, proactive leadership to ensure effective implementation. The 3rd edition of the World Health Organization’s Joint External Evaluation…

The Global Accountability Platform (COVID GAP) blog series. July 14, 2022 By Nellie Bristol and Krishna Udayakumar The U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s call to include an omicron component in vaccines that will be used for boosters in the U.S. beginning in fall 2022 could once again exacerbate global vaccine inequities, providing some high-income countries new vaccine options that likely won’t reach other parts of the world for months or years. The move comes even as the most recent waves of omicron, BA.4/5, which now dominate in the U.S., are proving even more contagious, more adept at evading both natural and vaccine-induced immunity, and producing disease that is not responding as well to some therapies, especially monoclonal antibodies. There also is some evidence that these variants could invade lung tissue in a way not seen in other omicron variants. All…

The Global Accountability Platform (COVID GAP) blog series. June 23, 2022 By Nellie Bristol and Ernesto Ortiz [caption id="attachment_2889" align="aligncenter" width="300"] Image by Legado via www.flickr.com[/caption] As the COVID-19 pandemic ramped up in early 2020, Peru already was on its way to having one of the highest recorded death rates per capita of any country in the world. Its health facilities were overrun, health workers were overtaxed, or worse, infected themselves, and supplies ranging from personal protective equipment to diagnostic tests were in desperately short supply. Isolated communities were particularly in dire straits as national lock downs prevented critical supplies from reaching remote areas. Contributing to Peru’s poor performance: the informal status of more than three quarters of the labor pool making lockdown order adherence nearly impossible, poorly functioning health facilities,…