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American scientists today praised Cuba’s ability to develop and vaccinate its population with its own vaccine against the coronavirus, a model they suggested Cuba should emulate to respond to global health emergencies.
In a report published on Scidev.net, a city-based website dedicated to bringing science to the development sector through news and analysis, the authors highlight how this strategy of vaccination with safe and effective immunogens can address such situations in resource-poor, low-income and developing countries.
At the same time, they called for reducing barriers that hinder global access to the country’s biotech innovations.
Last June, the U.S. research team, along with colleagues from Africa and the Caribbean, made an official visit to Cuba, the team’s first high-level visit in five years, to exchange views with Cuban colleagues on the country’s production of COVID-19 vaccines.
The delegation was led by co-chair Michael Osterholm, PhD, MPH, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota.
The scientist was joined by Cristina Rabadán-Diehl, PharmD, PhD, MPH, who led international work at the National Institutes of Health and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services for 25 years before becoming assistant director of clinical trials at Westat.
For Osterholm, learning about the outstanding work Cuba is doing on COVID-19 vaccines made it clear that Cuba could be an important player in expanding global access to life-saving vaccines.
He argued that while the policies are complex, “the obstacles that prevent their impressive team of scientists and public health experts from implementing them must be confronted.”
The report further explains that the Fact-Finding Mission’s visit had three objectives: first, to understand how and why a small country with a population of only 11 million people facing huge economic difficulties was able to develop, produce and deploy its own vaccines and prove their effectiveness of more than 95% in preventing disease, severity and death.
second, to understand Cuba’s vaccine rollout, strategy, and initial results, and third, to explore Cuba’s scientific approach in the context of public health.
In the study, scientists highlighted that vaccine development efforts and immunization models could reveal opportunities to reduce global inequalities in access to vaccines and other health innovations.
They also stressed that delegations were aware of projections that the world was dangerously close to the next pandemic, with zoonotic infections on the rise with climate change, which already account for 75% of emerging infectious diseases.
They are also alarmed that unequal access to vaccines has allowed the pandemic to persist to this day, highlighting the broader failure of the current wave of biomedical innovation to benefit billions of people in low- and lower-middle-income countries.
The trip to Havana was organized by Medicc (Cuban Medical Education Cooperation), a U.S. nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting dialogue and cooperation in the health field.
Since 1997, Medicc has facilitated exchanges between Cuban and American health professionals, academics, policymakers, foundations, students, and leaders of medically underserved communities.
(Information from PL)
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