The Roman summit on 21 May must not end with a show of powerful people. Quick and effective solutions are needed to counter the pandemic that is worsening day by day on a global level
The Global Health Summit planned in Rome for 21 May (under the Italian Presidency of the G20 and in collaboration with the European Commission) must not end in a show of powerful people; rapid and effective solutions are needed to counter the pandemic which on a global level is worsening day by day.
Luckily Marina Sereni, Luigi di Maio, Roberto Speranza e Mario Draghi (obviously in concert with their foreign colleagues and with the support of the international medical-scientific community) have more than a month to propose concrete solutions avoiding that the Rome Summit on Global Health ends up in a media event, but without practical effects.
Last April 7 In one of his rare tweets Mario Draghi declared: “The #GlobalHealthSummit is a special event of the @g20org co-organized with the @EU_Commission. We will discuss how to strengthen our health systems and their security, how to improve our ability to face future crises with a spirit of solidarity ”. The statements of Ursula Von der Layen are on the same wavelength: “The world must prepare to protect humanity from future pandemics. All countries must work together to improve global health security. To support these efforts, the @EU_Commission will co-organize the #GlobalHealthSummit with @ g20org “.
But how to give substance to these high-sounding statements that for now appear only good intentions? The first objective of the upcoming Rome summit should be to negotiate an agreement (based on solid technical foundations) that puts an end to the prevailing babel on vaccines.
The most technically equipped regulatory bodies (such as the EMA of the European Union and the CDC of the United States) are pursuing valid selection criteria and due to their severity they appear to a part of the scientific community to be almost too rigid in terms of safety and efficacy. vaccines. We are facing the squaring of the circle. And it is very difficult to check the operation of all the gears of a high-speed train in full swing.
Beyond metaphor, it is very difficult to monitor the side effects of hundreds and hundreds of millions of vaccines administered to people in absolute emergency after having dramatically shortened the usual times required for clinical trials. The utmost rigor and the precautionary principle are the pillars of a serious public health policy. However, the messages should be formulated with care and much more prudence by both the technical authorities and the political leaders.
Unfortunately, this is often not the case. In these days the media communication of some virologists and some political decision makers is taking on pathological and paradoxical characteristics. Continuing at this rate, the fear of getting vaccinated risks overwhelming the fear of being infected by viruses: we hope not because the results would be catastrophic.
If on both sides of the Atlantic the transparency and caution of the regulatory authorities appear almost excessive, the public communication relating to vaccines (and vaccination campaigns) in Russia, China and other Asian countries is much more opaque. On the one hand, there is no full transparency of the experimental processes and authorization procedures, on the other hand there is no detailed information for the control of the national and international production and distribution processes of vaccines.
The upcoming G20 summit on 21 May must close this great gap. It is necessary to work (as Dr. Anthony Fauci mentioned in a recent meeting with Indian colleagues) for a convergence of the international medical-scientific community to reach a universal approach to anti Covid vaccines (capable of preventing the entire range of variants) .
To achieve this goal in view of the summit on May 21, Italian diplomacy (as president of the G20) could suggest and promote a first meeting between the highest technical-scientific authorities of the European Union, the United States, Russia and China. and other countries.
As President of the G20 Italy has the honor and the burden of preparing a draft agreement to be submitted to all leaders. The hope is from May 21st the Global Health Summit will lead to a unified and coherent strategy to counter the pandemic on the two key elements:
a) unify the criteria for evaluating the efficacy and safety of vaccines;
b) finance vaccination campaigns in the poorest countries in the world. Patent liberalization is already underway, but without adequate resources no one produces and distributes vaccines.
At the time of the US / USSR bipolarity it was possible to establish an international regime for the reduction of nuclear weapons (including inspection activities). After the great crisis of 2007/2008 and the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, the G20 in London in 2009 successfully entrusted the Financial Stability Board chaired by Mario Draghi the task of placing large banks and systemically important financial institutions under special supervision.
While it is difficult to find a common language on divisive issues such as Cyber (where civil liberties and democracy collide on the one hand, the mass surveillance of digital totalitarianism on the other), healthcare is an area in which multilateral negotiations can have real margins of success. The good results obtained at the multilateral level in particularly sensitive areas such as nuclear weapons or global finance are very encouraging precedents: why well-planned negotiations why shouldn’t they work for vaccines and Global Health?
The second objective that the Italian Presidency should put at the center of the Global Health Summit on 21 May is a radical reform of the functioning of the World Health Organization. The most striking negative data of the WHO concerns precisely the experience of the pandemic. The first officially recognized case of Covid 19 was detected in Wuhan on November 17, 2019. WHO declared the pandemic crisis on March 11, 2020.
5 months is definitely too long, an unacceptable time interval that has allowed tens – or perhaps hundreds – of millions of citizens (Chinese and non-Chinese) to travel around the world, putting their own health or that of others at risk.
The leaders of the World Health Organization justified themselves by explaining that in the first months they had received reassuring and incorrect information from China. This is undeniable; at the time it was enough to consult the WHO website and the documents received from the health authorities of Wuhan and from the province of the Hubei Union. However, the crucial point is precisely this. The reform of the WHO should provide for greater freedom of action for its leaders with respect to bureaucratic constraints and respect for sovereignties that are incompatible with an efficient response to health emergencies.
When health is at stake, quick, effective, fair and safe answers are in the general interest: either we all save ourselves or no one is saved! The problem is that it is often not easy to distinguish indicators of success from propaganda data. In this regard, I limit myself to pointing out to the readers of Formiche.net the anomaly of the Hungarian case which, due to the contradictory data it presents, deserves a specific study.
Hungary is at the same time the European Union country that has carried out the highest number of vaccinations and at the same time it is also the EU member state with the highest percentage of deceased people compared to the population. Some observers have explained this dyscrasia by blaming the Chinese vaccines that Budapest makes extensive use of in its vaccination campaigns. It’s just a suspicion, perhaps one of the many mischievous interpretations.
Finally, the third and final aspect on which the summit of 21 May should at least start a new path is the great question of health services in the African continent and in particular in the countries of sub-Saharan Africa.
The long-term success of actions to combat the Ebola epidemic is due to the fact that emergency vaccination campaigns have been integrated with the construction of resilient national health systems. The future of strategic relations between Europe and Africa is at stake on this central aspect in Global Health Policies, to which Italian foreign and cooperation policies will be able to make a decisive contribution.