As part of its communal effort to see a potential COVID-19 vaccine fairly manufactured and distributed throughout the world by the end of 2021, the COVAX facility has put out a call for civil society and community organizations (CSOs) to contribute.
COVAX is the brainchild of three organizations: the World Health Organization, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness, and Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance. It’s part of their COVID-19 Tools (ACT) Accelerator, meant to develop and equitably distribute a safe and effective COVID-19 vaccine in short order. COVAX pools resources to purchase vaccines at scale, share risks, and invest in manufacturing, providing a means for countries at all income levels to get involved.
Such efforts involve many moving parts, though, and now COVAX wants CSO representatives to help coordinate, garner support in politics and at the community level to guarantee access and delivery, provide subject matter expertise and advocate for civil society and community perspectives. COVAX looks at CSO representatives as a key path to building public trust for healthcare systems and COVID-19 vaccination programs, and vital to any deployment efforts.
Such organizations can nominate representatives for both the COVAX coordination meeting and several workstreams, including the technical review group, enabling science SWAT, manufacturing SWAT, clinical development and operations SWAT, and the vaccine strategy, access and allocation, and country readiness and delivery coordination group and subgroups. Representatives will be chosen by a selection panel, with a hard deadline for applications set on Aug. 25, 2020.