India is one of the worst‐hit nations by the COVID‐19 pandemic and witnessed a devastating impact across cities in the country. Although behavioral measures like wearing a face mask, maintaining ...social distance, and hand hygiene helped to control the spread of the disease initially, but a long‐term action by vaccinating the population is a promising solution. On 16 January 2021, India undertook the challenge to vaccinate 300 million people by August 2021 against COVID‐19, the largest vaccination campaign globally. India has been lauded by several prominent organizations around the world for its efforts. But catering to India's massive population is not without its own set of complex challenges. As of 29 July 2021, a mere 9.82 million (approximately 7.03 percent of the total Indian population) people have been fully vaccinated against COVID‐19 with the first and second dose, and only 352.5 million (roughly 25.28 percent of the total Indian population) have been partly vaccinated with the first dose. This shows, India's current COVID‐19 vaccination policies and plans are still inadequate and not undisputedly equitable even after several amendments in the guidelines. However, even with the second wave abating slowly and steadily in India, there is a need to further re‐strategize the current vaccination policy and plans in India against COVID‐19 to help achieve long‐term positive outcomes in the shortest feasible time frame hoping to evade a third wave.
With large swathes of the world's population-majority clustered in low- and middle-income countries-still yet to receive the minimum of two doses of the COVID-19 vaccine; The need to address the ...failures of international solidarity to equitably distribute COVID-19 vaccines is now more urgent than ever to help curb the pandemic and prevent future variants. However, many high-income countries have adopted a "me first" approach, proceeding to offer COVID-19 booster doses to their entire populations, including those at least risk of severe illness, whilst the rest of the world is left unvaccinated or partially vaccinated with one dose for even their most vulnerable communities.
COVID-19 vaccine inequity places the health of the global population at risk and exacerbates socio-economic repercussions, especially in low- and middle-income countries. Initiatives launched to combat vaccine inequity such as the Fair Allocation Framework for the COVID-19 Vaccines (COVAX) have been unsuccessful as several governments, primarily from high-income countries, have scaled down their contributions to the initiative. Furthermore, COVAX has not seriously engaged with the Access to COVID-19 Tools (ACT) Health Systems Connector, as was originally intended, leading to crucial health systems components critical to vaccine delivery to be overlooked. Several strategies can be employed to help achieve the desired global immunization goals, such as Intellectual Property waivers, increased donations, and activation of new COVID-19 vaccine manufacturing hubs. In addition, continued advocacy for vaccine equity by all involved and affected stakeholders, as well as critical amendments to existing or upcoming legislation and funding mechanisms will help address the shortcomings of current inequitable vaccine distribution.
Global solidarity and collective action through pandemic governance mechanisms are urgently needed to ensure vaccine equity. These interventions are vital to rapidly mitigate ongoing health and humanitarian crises and ultimately curb the pandemic, sooner rather than later.
...evacuation flights were extremely crowded. Sexual and reproductive health face further neglect and maternal and child health may be further compromised in the near future. ...some female health ...care workers, who have been a cornerstone in developing initiatives for maternal and child health, were not allowed by the Taliban to return to their job postings. The need to ensure that the international community and civil society stand as one in the spirit of solidarity, raising awareness, placing pressure on national governments, and requesting for aid to ameliorate the unabated humanitarian crises in Afghanistan, is now more important than ever. 1 Nelson R. Mandela School of Medicine, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, South Africa 2 Father Muller Medical College, Mangalore, Karnataka, India 3 Kabul University of Medical Sciences, Kabul, Afghanistan 4 Amsterdam University Medical Centers, Amsterdam, the Netherlands
Abstract
India is home to the most significant number of tuberculosis (TB) cases around the globe. The COVID-19 crisis has deeply perturbed most of the essential TB services in India. Regulating TB ...is difficult in a densely populated country like India due to latent TB infection in millions of Indians, which can reactivate at any point in the future. Due to the ongoing pandemic, healthcare workers have been diverted to activities implemented for effective COVID-19 management, leaving a meager workforce to help deal with TB management. Integrating TB and COVID-19 to augment India’s health outreach is the need of the hour to diminish the effect of the COVID-19 crisis on TB. Increasing overall testing capacity, active screening, implementation of strategies for easy identification of TB hotspots, and ensuring uninterrupted drug supply for treatment through heedful planning of local and regional distribution and transportation will especially help cater to the vulnerable population who are at a high risk of suffering from adverse outcomes of TB. Lessons learnt in the battle against COVID-19 can most definitely help in providing insights to fulfill the goal of eliminating TB from India.
Dear Editor, Coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) caused by Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) was declared a pandemic by WHO on 11 March 2020 and has adversely affected ...human society and disrupted global health...
Zika virus amid COVID‐19 in India: A rising concern Rackimuthu, Sudhan; Hunain, Reem; Islam, Zarmina ...
The International journal of health planning and management,
January 2022, 2022-Jan, 2022-01-00, 20220101, Letnik:
37, Številka:
1
Journal Article
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