by Shivapriya Kamath
The whole world is engaged in a battle to subjugate the coronavirus pandemic. The fight has brought various issues regarding the health sector to light. This essay examines three important aspects of this new struggle, which may have lasting impressions on the Global Health Sector, even after the globe wins over the pandemic.
The first and foremost aspect is the large scale investments in the sector. Governments as well as businesses have joined the efforts of the international organisations to fund research that help in the management of the pandemic. The UN Foundation along with Swiss Philanthropy Foundation has launched the COVID19 Solidarity Response Fund to which individuals, philanthropies as well as businesses, can contribute in order to support WHO to help needy countries prevent, detect and manage COVID19. The Gates Foundation, Wellcome and Mastercard together launched a $125 million initiative named ‘COVID 19 Therapeutics Accelerator’ to speed up development and access to therapies for COVID19. The government of Canada has announced that it will fund 96 research projects that focus on development and implementation of measures to detect, manage and reduce transmission of the virus. Various other corporations including Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Starbucks and Walmart have also contributed to these funds. The World Bank Group has initiated retroactive financing upto 40 percent in all emergency response projects.
Funding medical research has become a necessary investment to sustain a healthy workforce and customer base for these entities rather than philanthropy. These have brought the researches in biotechnology into the spotlight. The biotech stocks have managed to grab public attention in the past weeks. On one hand, this could lead to a significant increase in venture funding received by these firms. On the other hand, pandemic products are extraordinarily high risk investments. The scale of investment required in this sector in order to ensure better methods to control and manage the impact of future epidemics is very huge. Hence, the pharmaceutical and medtech companies will soon after the crisis period might adopt strategies to minimize their risk and loss. Though such strategic adjustments are necessary to ensure their continued and substantial involvement in the economy, these might not always be people friendly.
There is every chance the governments may attempt to mobilise funds to minimise the risks faced by the venture capitalists. Economists often describing investment in health as a “cost without any return” is a past reference. This view had changed since the World Development Report 1993 of the World Bank, which asserted that governments spending more on health will reap the “economic benefits of human development”. Following this, the Lancet Commission on Investing in Health, in 2013, concluded that one-dollar investment in health in low and middle income countries would yield 9 to 20-fold returns on investment. A well planned investment by the government would boost the confidence of other investors thereby leading to higher funding.This shall also set market patterns more predictable and ready for investments.
The second important aspect is the emerging role of artificial intelligence in the health sector. As the pandemic spread across the globe at an alarming rate, doctors and professionals found it difficult to contain. A more efficient health system became the need of the hour to manage and control the pandemic. The White House Office of Science and Technology asked researchers to use artificial intelligence to analyze 29,000 research papers on COVID19. AI can be useful for various purposes such as to predict the epidemic outbreaks, speed up discovery and development of treatments and medications, curtail fatalities and manage diseases effectively.
Infervision, a China based AI company developed an algorithm to distinguish COVID 19 images of lungs from other respiratory infections. This could reduce the burden on clinicians as they no longer need to manually read images one by one to identify the high risk cases. Apart from this, AI can also help prevent epidemics by identifying potential outbreaks and controlling it before it spreads. On December 31st 2019, Blue Dot, a Toronto based AI company had flagged “unusual pneumonia” in Wuhan 9 days prior to the release of the WHO statement alerting people on the emergence of a novel Coronavirus. Various biotech firms have also resorted to AI to develop vaccines and drugs. Insilico Medicine was able to use its AI system to identify thousands of molecules for potential medication in just 4 days. In the first week of March, Google’s Deepmind published a research discussing how they used Alphafold, their AI system in modeling the structure of various proteins associated with the virus and determining their physical properties.
Even though these are yet to be experimentally verified, they indicate the potential heights the technology can achieve in near future. However, there are challenges associated with using AI as it works on a “garbage in, garbage out” principle i.e. the accuracy of the results is determined by the accuracy and quality of the data supplied to the system. A number of national science advisers including those of India and US have asked publishers to provide free access to the research relating to the pandemic. Strategic investment along with other supportive policies can develop AI into an extremely useful asset in this field. The downside is that the internationally fragmented governance of the digital economy might accept the practices during covid19 as norm-setting precedents.
The third aspect is the necessity of strong collaborative efforts in global health security by nations. In the globalized world, all countries are closely interconnected and an outbreak in any country could quickly spread all over the world. Although the current protective measures adopted by governments may prove successful in reducing the spread of the virus temporarily, a rebound is likely to occur when the restrictive measures are relaxed. There has been a rapid growth in the number of international migrants over the past few decades. Heterogeneity of the immigrant population poses a big threat to public health policy of all nations. There is a need to promote and build health systems for immigrants all over the world and to involve them in their health policies. WHO and IOM should co-operate hand-in-hand to build a more inclusive global public health system so that the migrant exodus does not happen during pandemics anymore.
There has been significant pressure on governments of developed countries to help LMICs whose health systems are not strong enough to handle the pandemic. This will help in slowing down the circulation of the virus. Given the economic impact of such an epidemic, a continuous effort is essential to prevent and control outbreaks in the future. Individuals, businesses and governments are holding hands with organizations such as WHO, ISARIC, GloPID R etc. to ensure global health security.
The three aspects discussed above are highly complementary to each other. The third aspect or the need for global security can be viewed as the ultimate vision. The second aspect or technology serves as both the means and the catalyst. The first aspect is the essential fuel that is required to actualize the vision. Yet, what is most important is that everyone must recognize the significance of these aspects and unite for the same. When the upheaval created by the pandemic dwindles, it is important to not forget these issues and to undertake appropriate action to secure a hale and hearty future for all. When the upheaval created by the pandemic dwindles, it is important to not forget these issues and to undertake appropriate action to secure a hale and hearty future for all.