Drawing from lessons learned from the global response to COVID-19, IFPMA launched the Berlin Declaration.

This sets out an approach to more equitable pandemic preparedness and response based on collaboration, commitments, and contributions across the global health community.

Our industry’s goal is to address issues of equitable access to vaccines, diagnostics, and therapeutics during a global pandemic. We propose reserving part of the real-time production of these medical countermeasures to distribute to vulnerable populations in LMICs.

Looking ahead, it’s vital that countries have the technical and health infrastructure, human resources, financial capacity, and political support to successfully vaccinate, test, and provide care for their populations.

In addition, borders between countries should be open without trade restrictions.

While we have been part of the largest and most rapid global vaccine rollout in history, we know that society expects us to act even faster and much more efficiently in terms of equitable rollout in the future. All stakeholders have a collective responsibility in this endeavour.

The global health and governance community must use the lessons learned from COVID-19 and apply a forward-looking approach to designing a new global architecture for Health Emergency Preparedness, Response, and Resilience (HEPR).

This should acknowledge that a multistakeholder structure including industry, public agencies, multilateral organizations, financial institutions, governments, civil society, and philanthropic organizations is the only viable way to manage pandemics.

The innovative pharmaceutical industry’s guiding principles for effective multilateral pandemic preparedness and response include:

It’s also imperative to build on industry’s strengths when it comes to R&D, manufacturing, and distribution. This can only be achieved through a robust intellectual property system, which is the basis for putting in place the collaborations needed to develop and manufacture vaccines and treatments rapidly and at scale. 62 vaccines and 42 treatments have been approved for COVID-19, built on decades of R&D. Almost 450 voluntary collaborations are in place to support the global supply of COVID-19 vaccines and treatments. 610 COVID-19 vaccines and 1,171 COVID-19 treatments are currently in development.

Looking ahead, pathogen surveillance systems need to be pandemic ready and support pre-emptive R&D. Health systems need to be stronger and resilient so that they can rapidly absorb and deliver vaccines and medicines to those who need them. In addition, for vaccination campaigns to be successful, people need should feel confident in their governments.

This demands a lab-to-last-mile strategy.

Also, the world needs to show more solidarity because pandemics do not respect borders.

Our industry proposes to create a collaborative solution for more equitable rollout of vaccines, diagnostics, and treatments for future pandemics. It has committed to reserve vaccines and treatments for priority populations in lower-income countries, but this will only work if countries commit to a social contract.

We call on other stakeholders to work together with us to help make this proposal a reality and shape a future where everyone is better protected during pandemics.

Lessons learned from COVID-19 inform a legal liability framework for pandemic vaccines built to meet the challenges of a future pandemic.

NFC systems provide an administrative, non-judicial process for individuals to seek compensation for injuries allegedly linked to vaccines. During a pandemic, effective NFC systems may be essential to ensure equitable compensation and support rapid and continued vaccine coverage. NFC systems should be coupled with legislative liability protections for entities throughout the supply chain whose ability to efficiently develop, distribute, and administer vaccines may be hindered by excessive litigation.

We call for governments to implement well-designed NFC systems along with liability protections as essential preparation to respond to the next pandemic threat.