InFocus: Vaccines
2021
Long dismissed as the backwaters of healthcare innovation, the tremendous value of vaccines – the single most cost-effective health intervention after clean water – made itself starkly clear in 2020, as the discovery of a novel coronavirus quickly exploded into a full-blown global pandemic that rages on still.
While billions have since been poured into vaccine development for COVID-19 and vaccine candidates have been developed and approved (albeit so far only for emergency use) at unprecedented speed, sector stakeholders are only cautiously optimistic regarding the longevity of this newly awakened global interest and investment in vaccines – and whether the frenetic zeal to discovering and deploying COVID-19 vaccines would translate into sustained and longer-term efforts to support vaccine R&D for a whole host of other infectious diseases that continue to claim tens of millions of lives annually.
This issue of InFocus dedicated to vaccines features a variety of global, regional and local stakeholders across the public and private spheres to provide a snapshot of the four thematics at the heart of the vaccine sector: Research & Development, Manufacturing & Supply Chain, Partnership Models, and Public Health Impact.
Long dismissed as the backwaters of healthcare innovation, the tremendous value of vaccines – the single most cost-effective health intervention after clean water – made itself starkly clear in 2020, as the discovery of a novel coronavirus quickly exploded into a full-blown global pandemic that rages on still.
While billions have since been poured into vaccine development for COVID-19 and vaccine candidates have been developed and approved (albeit so far only for emergency use) at unprecedented speed, sector stakeholders are only cautiously optimistic regarding the longevity of this newly awakened global interest and investment in vaccines – and whether the frenetic zeal to discovering and deploying COVID-19 vaccines would translate into sustained and longer-term efforts to support vaccine R&D for a whole host of other infectious diseases that continue to claim tens of millions of lives annually.
This issue of InFocus dedicated to vaccines features a variety of global, regional and local stakeholders across the public and private spheres to provide a snapshot of the four thematics at the heart of the vaccine sector: Research & Development, Manufacturing & Supply Chain, Partnership Models, and Public Health Impact.
