Research in high-impact factor journals:

Lancet (IF - 202.731)

Lancet (IF - 202,731)

COVID-19 resulted in at least 14·8 million excess deaths globally between 2021 and 2022 and derailed progress towards achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals. During the COVID-19 pandemic there have been capacity gaps in national pandemic prevention, preparedness, and response (PPR) strategies, failures of international collaboration and solidarity, and underlying inequities and inequalities.

Inequitable access to medical countermeasures across nations, particularly in Africa, led to poor access to vaccines, diagnostics, and treatments, exacerbated by vaccine nationalism. The negotiation in 2023 by the Intergovernmental Negotiating Body (INB) for a convention, agreement, or other international instrument on PPR and the process of amending the International Health Regulations (2005) (IHR) has been undertaken to address these shortcomings The World Health Assembly in May, 2024 is expected to adopt the new instrument and the amendments to the IHR The Zero Draft of the instrument released on Feb 1, 2023, involved inputs from member states, UN agencies, the public, and other stakeholders through deliberations in the first three INB meetings, as well as written submissions There has been further discussion on the Zero Draft at the fourth INB meeting and at the fifth meeting on April 3–6, 2023. A progress report on INB work will be reported to the World Health Assembly in May, 2023 The content of the final instrument will be negotiated and decided by countries *Read full study

Erzse, Karen Hofman

Although commercial entities can contribute positively to health and society there is growing evidence that the products and practices of some commercial actors-notably the largest transnational corporations-are responsible for escalating rates of avoidable ill health, planetary damage, and social and health inequity; these problems are increasingly referred to as the commercial determinants of health.

The climate emergency, the non-communicable disease epidemic, and that just four industry sectors (ie, tobacco, ultra-processed food, fossil fuel, and alcohol) already account for at least a third of global deaths illustrate the scale and huge economic cost of the problem This paper, the first in a Series on the commercial determinants of health, explains how the shift towards market fundamentalism and increasingly powerful transnational corporations has created a pathological system in which commercial actors are increasingly enabled to cause harm and externalise the costs of doing so Consequently, as harms to human and planetary health increase, commercial sector wealth and power increase, whereas the countervailing forces having to meet these costs (notably individuals, governments, and civil society organisations) become correspondingly impoverished and disempowered or captured by commercial interests. This power imbalance leads to policy inertia; although many policy solutions are available, they are not being implemented *Read full study

Lancet (IF - 202,731)