Finding our own solutions to epidemics

BRICS countries lack influence in finding ways to control disease

IT WOULD hardly be news to anyone living in the developing world that we’re not faring particularly well in our quest to end epidemics such as Aids, tuberculosis (TB) and malaria by 2030. According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), TB is the ninth leading cause of death worldwide and BRICS countries together account for 46% of all incident cases.

This is not a new challenge where developing countries are concerned – begging the question: why have we not yet seen innovations that could help us put an end to TB and other prevalent epidemics?

This was an important discussion placed under the spotlight at the 10th BRICS Academic Forum held in Joburg last month.

While the BRICS platform has looked to the development of diagnostic tools and vaccines to address this challenge, multi-drug resistant TB (MDR-TB) has undermined many of these efforts.

Disease control is about more than drugs. A major part of the problem is that we haven’t looked at the root causes of MDR-TB. And the reality is that if BRICS countries continue to accept the drugs foisted on them by large, transnational pharmaceutical companies as solutions to the TB epidemic, all we will achieve is people who are resistant to the drugs currently used to fight MDR-TB.

The biggest issue of all is that although BRICS countries bear the burden of epidemics like TB, they are not empowered to propose solutions to these problems. This is highly problematic because global health governance platforms like WHO are focused largely on disease control, rather than the management of social determinants of health.

What’s more, global pharmaceutical production does not favour developing countries. This has major repercussions.

As MDR-TB becomes increasingly resistant to the drugs used to treat it, so more innovative solutions will be needed – solutions such as biopharmaceuticals.

But biologicals require sophisticated manufacturing capabilities, making them very expensive and potentially inaccessible within the developing countries where they are so desperately needed.

It’s clear that developing countries need greater influence in global health governance

WHY HAVE WE NOT YET SEEN INNOVATIONS THAT COULD HELP US END PREVALENT EPIDEMICS?

platforms, where currently the decision-making power rests with developed countries.

So while BRICS countries bear the brunt of the global disease burden, we have very little room to contribute to finding working solutions.

Greater political will is needed to establish the required influence. This is closely followed by the need for investment in technical experts with the ability to engage specialists from high-income countries.

The South African delegation at this year’s Forum put forward the idea of a Virtual Innovation and Knowledge Sharing Platform. This would essentially leverage BRICS expertise and simplify the process of accessing information by overcoming traditional barriers of distance and language. Crowd processing would essentially be used to gather innovative ideas and attract funding to popular ideas.

Indeed the final list of 20 recommendations, which the BRICS Think Tanks Council put forward to BRICS leaders at the end of the forum, included the establishment of a Vaccination Research Platform to respond to communicable and non-communicable disease challenges.

Of course, we don’t expect this technology to solve our problems overnight, but at least through collaboration we can start moving in the right direction.

Distributed by African Media Agency (AMA) on behalf of SABTT .

The South African BRICS Think Tank was established as a platform for researchers and academics to exchange ideas and generate evidence-based policy recommendations. It aims to shape the strategic vision of South Africa and the wider African region around global financial, economic and governance issues, and to conduct policy analysis to inform the long-term strategy of the BRICS.