Officials attending the inaugural meeting of the Commonwealth Heads of Procurement Network (HOPN) have underscored the importance of supporting countries to secure essential vaccines, medicines, and other health products.
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As least developed countries (LDCs) join the rest of the world in rolling out Covid-19 vaccines, there are concerns over access, transparency, equity and human rights violations. Against this backdrop, Southern African Development Community (SADC) members of parliament are calling for all hands on board to build the region’s capacity to produce medicines and to ensure that citizens benefit from its vast medicinal plant resources.
A virtual joint session of the SADC Parliamentary Forum’s standing committees and the Regional Women’s Parliamentary Caucus, held on 15 April, called on SADC member states to harness the “flexibilities afforded by the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (Trips), to respond to their various communicable and non-communicable disease public health concerns”.