Health care supply chains are the backbone of every health system, but right now, they are not able to consistently supply essential medicines, vaccines, and medical products that patients need. This is especially true in low- and middle-income countries and for patients living with noncommunicable diseases such as hypertension and diabetes. Investments in vaccine supply chains, and the rapid introduction of COVID-19 vaccines, have given policymakers and medical suppliers an opportunity to leverage this expertise and knowledge to strengthen health care supply chains around the world.
In this PATH Live Forum, our panel will identify key barriers to supply chain security for medicines and products needed in low- and middle-income countries. Speakers will discuss how evidence-based solutions to supply chain challenges can lead to better care and disease management for more people.
Despite being preventable and treatable, tuberculosis (TB) remains one of the world’s most deadly diseases, causing 1.5 million deaths per year. But in recent years, TB care has improved greatly, and these advancements have been adapted to support people living with other infectious diseases. Today, public health decision-makers and practitioners have the opportunity to scale these developments further across health systems.
In this PATH Live Forum, representatives from the public and nonprofit sectors as well as a TB survivor and champion for comprehensive care will explore how insights and lessons from TB care can strengthen primary health care systems that put patients first.
Scientists and public health experts have made astonishing achievements in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, more than a year-and-a-half into the pandemic, the majority of people around the world still don’t have access to many of the health care innovations they need to prevent, detect, and treat COVID-19. Despite great global progress against COVID-19, far too many still lack access to the vaccines, tests, and medicines that keep people safe and healthy. In this forum, PATH's CEO Nikolaj Gilbert, Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal (Washington’s 7th District), and Dr. Umair Shah (Washington’s Secretary of Health) held an important conversation about health equity, COVID-19, and the future of pandemic preparedness.
PATH has long-supported our country partners in developing costed investment roadmaps for digital health. These roadmaps help align donor investments to country priorities and ensure that countries are able to lead their own digital health transformation. In this PATH Live Forum, held during the first annual Digital Health Week, we'll explore how country priorities are redefining best practices for financing digital health initiatives. The panel will reflect on the roadmap development processes in Tanzania and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, sharing insights and perspective from these experiences.
Following the Global COVID-19 Summit, world leaders have committed to several ambitious goals, including getting 70 percent of the world vaccinated against COVID-19 within one year. Achieving this ambitious goal will require that leaders understand low- and middle-income countries’ unique needs—a point not emphasized enough in global response efforts until now. PATH has made its own commitments in this pursuit and is convening important stakeholders to discuss critical next steps. From financing and political leadership to technology transfer and manufacturing, join this PATH Live Forum to discuss how we got to this moment, where we stand today, and what needs to happen to achieve vaccine equity and end the pandemic.
This PATH Live Forum addressed regulatory harmonization on the African continent, taking a closer look at the preparatory phase of the African Medicines Agency's (AMA) implementation and exploring how it can be leveraged to ensure high-quality health products get into the hands of those who need them most, when they are needed most.
This PATH Live Forum was sponsored by Temptime, a Zebra Technologies company.
Health data have the potential to inform more equitable policies, streamline decision-making, and address health threats. But how data are produced, analyzed, visualized, and used can mean the difference between information that is interesting and information that saves lives.
The public health community and the private sector have been partnering to improve data practices for more effective responses to endemic diseases like malaria and COVID-19. In this PATH Live Forum, our panel of thought leaders will discuss data's critical role in resilient health systems.
This forum was sponsored by Tableau Foundation.
Ending the COVID-19 pandemic is dependent upon all countries having access to vaccines. But demand is outpacing supply by billions of doses, and many countries still don’t have access to the vaccines they need to control the virus and protect their populations. This PATH Live Forum will take a closer look at what has worked—and what hasn’t worked—in the global effort to increase equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines. Join our panelists in a discussion about priorities for this pandemic, as well as how to build sustainable immunization systems for future pandemic preparedness.
From diagnosis to treatment and post-cure follow up, people living with TB often undergo a difficult health care journey. Keyuri Bhanushali, a TB survivor and advocate, speaks with panelists from the public health community about how to fill gaps and streamline the journey to build a patient-centered, integrated TB care pathway.
Resilient primary health care (PHC) systems are the world’s first and best defense against the spread of infectious disease—and our best chance of achieving universal health coverage. The doctors, nurses, and community health workers who staff PHC systems can help control the current pandemic and guard against the next, but they need the multi-pronged support of local governments, the private sector, and the global health community to do it.
Former PATH CEO Steve Davis passed the baton to current CEO Nikolaj Gilbert in January 2020, just as the COVID-19 pandemic began transforming the world around us. In this PATH Live Forum, Nikolaj and Steve have a close (but virtual) conversation about 2020, life before and after PATH, and a few of the trends outlined in Steve’s new book, "Undercurrents."
As COVID-19 vaccines become available, the world must have the infrastructure, supply chains, and distributions plans in place to introduce the vaccines at unprecedented scale and speed. What have we learned from past vaccine implementations that can guide an effective, equitable rollout strategy? Join our panel to examine lessons learned from years of experience introducing vaccines for malaria, meningitis, and more, and to discuss how these insights can inform efficient introduction plans for COVID-19 vaccines.
This PATH Live Forum is made possible by the ExxonMobil Foundation.
COVID-19 has set back TB eradication by a decade, but it’s also created new opportunities for the adoption of client-centered strategies that could benefit the global TB community in the long term. Join this important dialogue to learn more about how PATH and our partners are adapting to the pandemic to protect—and perhaps, even accelerate—TB progress in the long term.
Artificial intelligence has promising potential for health innovation, but the risks could easily outweigh the rewards. How can we ensure that frontier technologies move us toward health equity and not away from it? What role should the private sector play in advancing the use of these technologies in health systems? Join us for an important dialogue with leaders from the Novartis Foundation, Microsoft, and more as we explore these questions.
Oxygen is essential therapy for COVID-19 patients struggling to breathe, yet shortages in oxygen supply remain a challenge in low-and middle-income countries because of a web of interrelated issues. Why does oxygen supply disruption happen and how do we solve it? This PATH Live Forum disentangles key challenges impeding access –from demand planning to financing to supply and distribution systems –as well as innovative solutions to solve them for COVID-19 and beyond.
As the world responds to the SARS-CoV-2 virus, solutions are being quickly implemented to solve for the here and now. But health systems must support efforts beyond the pandemic. In this live forum, we explored how thoughtful investments made today can be leveraged not only to respond to COVID-19, but also to mitigate the worst-case scenarios of secondary deaths and morbidity and to lay a foundation for more resilient health systems that are better prepared to withstand future stressors.
As COVID-19 continues to spread around the world, it is changing our conversations about public health, about equity, about social and economic structures and norms. But we cannot forget that globally, we have endured similar hardships before.
In this PATH Live Forum, we looked back in history to consider lessons from a century ago when the 1918 influenza pandemic devastated the United States. Professor Nancy K. Bristow, author of American Pandemic: The Lost Worlds of the 1918 Influenza Epidemic, shared her insights.
Access to quality diagnostic tools is our first line of defense for protecting communities from disease. An extraordinary amount of resources have been mobilized in an attempt to rapidly research, develop, and deploy diagnostic testing for the SARS-CoV-2 virus. However, access to quality diagnostic remains a challenge. Newly developed tests have varying or unknown performance and quality, manufacturing capacity is unable to meet global demand, and lower- and middle-income countries have been priced out of available supply. PATH is monitoring these supply insecurities and the needs of clinicians and health providers around the world and is providing guidance and resources to industry partners and countries in order rapidly address these challenges.
In countries across the world, public health systems have made significant progress towards global goals for ending HIV, tuberculosis (TB), and malaria. Now, faced with COVID-19, these programs are up against new challenges that threaten recent lifesaving gains.
This live forum highlighted ways HIV, TB, and malaria service delivery platforms are being leveraged to support the COVID-19 response while mitigating its impact on delivery of essential health services and protecting frontline health care providers.
With a lens on Senegal, this discussion dives into real-time public health efforts underway to support governments and emergency operations centers as they fight the pandemic.
Speakers:
Dr. Abdoulaye Bousso, Director, Health Emergency Operations Center, Senegal
Ms. Aminatou Sar, Senegal Country Director, PATH
Dr. Linda Venczel, Director, Global Health Security, PATH