The global health landscape faced unprecedented challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic, revealing the urgent need for enhanced production capacity, diversified supply chains, and equitable access to health products. In response to this demand, the World Local Production Forum (WLPF) was initiated, aligning with World Health Assembly resolution WHA74.6, to spearhead coordinated efforts in strengthening local production and facilitating technology transfer.
The WLPF, a WHO initiative, has emerged as an important global platform, uniting Member States, industry leaders, academia, financial institutions, and various stakeholders. Its overarching goal is to facilitate coordination, shape strategies, and foster partnerships to promote sustainable local production and seamless technology transfer.
For the 2nd WLPF, Dr. Jicui Dong who leads the WLPF secretariat at WHO, outlined how the 2nd WLPF can do this:
- Fostering Partnerships: Encouraging collaboration between the public and private sectors, UN agencies, academia, financial development institutions and other stakeholders.
- Coordinating Initiatives: Aligning and coordinating national, regional, and global efforts in local production and technology transfer.
- Co-creating Innovative Solutions: Working collectively to overcome challenges and bottlenecks in sustainable local production and technology transfer.
- Engaging the Private Sector: Stimulating greater involvement of the private sector and nurturing new partnerships, including public-private-academic collaborations.
- Producing Recommendations: Formulating recommendations to guide synchronized global efforts toward the 3rd WLPF.
The 2nd WLPF generated four impactful recommendations:
- Addressing Information Gaps: Developing a comprehensive global and regional mapping of actors, programs and resources in manufacturing and plus technology transfer.
- Supporting Ecosystem Creation: Providing support and advice to Member States in creating and/or strengthening national, regional and global ecosystems for sustainable, eco-friendly, quality local production.
- Promoting Conducive Public Policies: Elevating the public health agenda and developing supportive public policies for a conducive financial environment.
- Establishing Training Networks: Promoting the establishment of a network to synchronize training resources and facilities, building capacities in manufacturing, technology transfer, research and development, policy and regulation.
To ensure the operationalization of these outcomes, Dr. Dong highlighted ongoing collaborations with key partners, including UNITAID, WHO, and the African Union Development Agency – NEPAD (AUDA-NEPAD) who are collaborating to establish the Health Product Manufacturing Support Platform (HMSP) to build capacity of African manufacturers to produce active pharmaceutical ingredients and diagnostics. WHO and the International Finance Corporation are exploring ways to conduct a mapping exercise to mitigate information gaps.
Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of WHO, outlined five crucial areas for governments to foster an ecosystem for local production:
- Providing an Enabling Environment: Policies and regulations ensuring coherence among different sectors, with a focus on health.
- Investment and Funding: Exploring new financing mechanisms to support R&D, production, compliance, and workforce development.
- Facilitating Knowledge Exchange: Encouraging the exchange of knowledge and technology between the public and private sectors.
- Building Workforce Capacity: Addressing challenges in finding a local workforce with appropriate skills for the entire pharmaceutical value chain.
- Ensuring Market Access: Implementing policies, incentives, and mechanisms to ensure access to markets for local manufacturers.
The regional dimension emerged as a critical strategy for sustainable local production during the meeting. Regionalization offers economies of scale, market de-fragmentation, diversified supply chains, and resource sharing. However, challenges such as coordination, governance, and regulatory harmonization need to be addressed.
With a surge in interest in technology transfer since COVID-19, Dr. Dong emphasized its pivotal role in strengthening and diversifying local production capacity. Technology transfer builds technical knowledge, leverages production data and experience, and fosters collaboration within and between sectors.
