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Civil society and medical product access in Africa: Lessons from COVID-19

Understanding health as a human right creates a legal obligation on countries to ensure access to timely, acceptable, and affordable health care. We highlight the importance of a meaningful role for civil society in improving access to well-regulated quality medical products in Africa; to support an...

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Autores principales: Wale, Janet L., Sehmi, Kawaldip, Kamoga, Regina, Ssekubugu, Robert
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9941705/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36824260
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fmedt.2023.1091425
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author Wale, Janet L.
Sehmi, Kawaldip
Kamoga, Regina
Ssekubugu, Robert
author_facet Wale, Janet L.
Sehmi, Kawaldip
Kamoga, Regina
Ssekubugu, Robert
author_sort Wale, Janet L.
collection PubMed
description Understanding health as a human right creates a legal obligation on countries to ensure access to timely, acceptable, and affordable health care. We highlight the importance of a meaningful role for civil society in improving access to well-regulated quality medical products in Africa; to support and be part of a regional social contract approach following the access issues that have been particularly evident during the COVID-19 pandemic. We argue that African communities have a clear participatory role as important stakeholders in the regulatory lifecycle. Solidarity is important for a cohesive approach as formal government healthcare infrastructure may be minimal for some countries, with little training of communities available for disease management and insufficient money to fund people to organise and deliver health care. Some of the issues for civil society engagement with multi-stakeholders, and possible mitigating strategies, are tabulated to initiate discussion on facilitators and concerns of governments and other stakeholders for meaningful participation by patients, communities and civil society within a regional regulatory lifecycle approach. Solidarity is called for to address issues of equity, ethics and morality, stigmatisation and mutual empowerment – to sustainably support the region and national governments to develop greater self-sufficiency throughout the regulatory lifecycle. By creating a participatory space, patients, communities and civil society can be invited in with clear missions and supported by well-defined guidance to create a true sense of solidarity and social cohesion. Strong leadership coupled with the political will to share responsibilities in all aspects of this work is key.
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spelling pubmed-99417052023-02-22 Civil society and medical product access in Africa: Lessons from COVID-19 Wale, Janet L. Sehmi, Kawaldip Kamoga, Regina Ssekubugu, Robert Front Med Technol Medical Technology Understanding health as a human right creates a legal obligation on countries to ensure access to timely, acceptable, and affordable health care. We highlight the importance of a meaningful role for civil society in improving access to well-regulated quality medical products in Africa; to support and be part of a regional social contract approach following the access issues that have been particularly evident during the COVID-19 pandemic. We argue that African communities have a clear participatory role as important stakeholders in the regulatory lifecycle. Solidarity is important for a cohesive approach as formal government healthcare infrastructure may be minimal for some countries, with little training of communities available for disease management and insufficient money to fund people to organise and deliver health care. Some of the issues for civil society engagement with multi-stakeholders, and possible mitigating strategies, are tabulated to initiate discussion on facilitators and concerns of governments and other stakeholders for meaningful participation by patients, communities and civil society within a regional regulatory lifecycle approach. Solidarity is called for to address issues of equity, ethics and morality, stigmatisation and mutual empowerment – to sustainably support the region and national governments to develop greater self-sufficiency throughout the regulatory lifecycle. By creating a participatory space, patients, communities and civil society can be invited in with clear missions and supported by well-defined guidance to create a true sense of solidarity and social cohesion. Strong leadership coupled with the political will to share responsibilities in all aspects of this work is key. Frontiers Media S.A. 2023-02-07 /pmc/articles/PMC9941705/ /pubmed/36824260 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fmedt.2023.1091425 Text en © 2023 Wale, Sehmi, Kamoga and Ssekubugu. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Medical Technology
Wale, Janet L.
Sehmi, Kawaldip
Kamoga, Regina
Ssekubugu, Robert
Civil society and medical product access in Africa: Lessons from COVID-19
title Civil society and medical product access in Africa: Lessons from COVID-19
title_full Civil society and medical product access in Africa: Lessons from COVID-19
title_fullStr Civil society and medical product access in Africa: Lessons from COVID-19
title_full_unstemmed Civil society and medical product access in Africa: Lessons from COVID-19
title_short Civil society and medical product access in Africa: Lessons from COVID-19
title_sort civil society and medical product access in africa: lessons from covid-19
topic Medical Technology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9941705/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36824260
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fmedt.2023.1091425
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