Adar Poonawalla bats for utilising learnings from Covid-19 to strengthen global health systems

Serum Institute of India (SII) CEO Adar Poonawalla at Davos appealed to multilateral organisations and world leaders to come up with a draft about learnings from the Covid-19 pandemic to strengthen health systems globally.

The learnings from the global pandemic would help in addressing inequity in the health systems that are prevalent currently, Poonawalla said.

"This year at Davos,I am appealing to multilateral organisations & world leaders to come together in creating a draft, learning from the lessons of the pandemic for a Global Pandemic Treaty to address inequity & strengthen global health systems," he said in a tweet.

Speaking to NDTV on the sidelines at Davos, Poonawalla said, "We all know what went wrong and what went right in this pandemic and some of the things that went wrong in terms of sharing of raw materials and vaccines, recognising vaccine certificates, global harmonisation of clinical trials and manufacturing, making more vaccines and treatments accessible globally - these are the kind of things I would hope to establish."

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"It may not be enforceable, but at least it offers some kind of framework and commitment like you see for climate change," he said.

Poonawalla also told the publication that he hopes that the next generation of Covid-19 vaccines would "even be able to block transmission".

About his call for the pandemic treaty, he told the publication that he has been working on a draft, and that he will circulate it at Davos in some closed-door sessions with multilateral organisations. "It has to be one of those organisations that take it forward. One individual country can't," Poonawalla said.

On Covid-19 vaccines, Poonawalla said that he hopes that in a "year or two", vaccines that can block transmission could become available.

"Vaccines have prevented hospitalisation and severe disease. But to deal with future mutant variants and to prevent breakthrough infections the real research is on now which does take a bit of time and maybe in a year or two we could see a vaccine that prevents transmission," he said.

(With PTI inputs)