In March, India began witnessing a second round of increase in COVID-19 cases. In April, the country had recorded 100,000 new cases per day for the first time since the start of the pandemic. Daily case rates would continue to grow explosively and, in May, reach a record high of more than 400,000 cases per day.
The irony is that India, responsible for more than half of the daily COVID-19 cases worldwide at the time, is also one of the world’s leading vaccine makers.
High-income countries were able to purchase enough doses of vaccine to immunize their populations several times. But delays in domestic production and lack of access to foreign supplies meant India was unable to protect itself from epidemics that have killed hundreds of thousands of people, and potentially even millions, citizens.
At the time of the deadly wave, only 3% of the Indian population had been fully vaccinated, thus offering many possibilities for the spread of the virus. Today, the Delta variant – first discovered in India during the country’s second wave – remains the dominant strain in the world.
“Vaccine inequity has been a major challenge in global public health and has certainly undermined the speed and effectiveness of our collective response to this pandemic,†said K. Srinath Reddy, president of the Public Health Foundation of India (PHFI). “If you have areas with high levels of immunization, but many areas with extremely low vaccine access and availability, then you have a very lopsided world. “
Professor K. Srinath Reddy is preparing for a keynote address in his office in Gurugram on December 8, 2021.
Throughout the pandemic, PHFI has advocated for vaccine equity in India. The organization is pushing forward a policy that aims to increase access to health care for those who do not have it.
The PHFI is not directly involved in the distribution and administration of vaccines, but has helped in other ways. It provided technical support to the government, develop health technologies, training primary care physicians and health workers, and using social media to increase awareness of the virus.
Reddy, who helped found PHFI, was head of the cardiology department at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences when he was approached with the idea of ​​starting an organization that focuses on improving public health in India.
“I still had about 10 years of service in cardiology, but when this concept was launched and I was asked to take the leadership position, I had no hesitation,” he said. declared. “I wanted to see this happen. “
Since its inception in 2006, PHFI has established six sites in India and trained over 26,000 primary care physicians.
For Reddy, working in public health was an opportunity to focus on the equity aspect of health care. He first realized that not everyone can afford good health thanks to the experiences of his mother, an obstetrician and gynecologist. She had treated a large number of poor patients who regularly had difficulty accessing care.
Professor K. Srinath Reddy
Professor K. Srinath Reddy interacts with first year Masters of Public Health students at the Public Health Foundation of India (PHFI) office in Gurugram on December 8, 2021.
Sahiba Chawdhary for Global Citizen
Professor K. Srinath Reddy
Students attend an interactive session by Professor K. Srinath Reddy at the Public Health Foundation of India (PHFI) office in Gurugram on December 8, 2021.
Sahiba Chawdhary for Global Citizen
Later, as a medical student and then a cardiologist, Reddy’s own experiences broadened his awareness of the social dimensions of health.
“I saw how the poor were much more likely to contract the disease, to not be able to afford the type of care required or to be pushed into poverty by the type of expenditure that the care involved”, a- he declared. “Even as a cardiologist, when I was practicing in the biggest hospital in India, it was very clear that many people came too late with very advanced diseases because they had poor facilities for early detection or could not. not afford to travel until the situation becomes dire. “
When Reddy conducted field research in epidemiology, he realized that poverty is also associated with inadequate health literacy, unhealthy diets, and fewer health exams, all of which is on the rise. risk factors.
Armed with this knowledge, Reddy has become an advocate for many intersectional health issues. He now advocates for tobacco control, nutrition, human rights and universal health coverage, which he says are key to solving the problem of equity. PHFI has become the means by which he hopes to achieve these goals.
“India was selling short by not investing enough in public health,” he said. “The idea was not just to diagnose the problem and write articles in prestigious journals, but to make sure that there really is a difference in the field. This is how my commitment to public health inequalities has translated into institution building and capacity building.
As India grappled with the world’s largest and deadliest COVID-19 outbreak, Reddy used his expertise to lead PHFI in the fight for vaccine equity in his country.
Professor K. Srinath Reddy, President, works on his computer as he prepares to speak at a webinar in the Health Leadership for Positive Change program.
The organization advocated for the vaccine to be free for everyone. It has also supported the creation of walk-in centers to overcome obstacles created by online vaccine registration systems. This is especially important for people who don’t have a smartphone or are unfamiliar with technology.
When the government demanded that people under 45 with comorbidities provide medical certificates to be vaccinated, PHFI spoke out against it. The organization said many people either did not have the required records or had not yet recognized their illness due to the lack of health services in rural areas.
PHFI has also worked with private hospital groups to address the challenges they face in sourcing vaccines for small towns and hospitals.
Since the peak of the second wave, the situation in India has improved dramatically – daily cases and deaths have declined, and 38% of the population is now fully vaccinated. Yet the majority of Indians are still vulnerable, leaving plenty of room for another push.
Most countries, especially in the developing world, have struggled to access COVID-19 vaccines. This limits the speed at which they can protect their populations from deadly outbreaks. At the same time, it increases the chances of developing more variants.
COVAX aims to deliver 2 million doses to low- and middle-income countries by the end of 2021, but a sharp disparity continues to exist between the haves and have-nots. The richest countries choose to prioritize booster injections for their own populations rather than allocating resources to low-income countries. Reversing this trend would help ensure that each country has vaccinated at least 10% of its population by the end of September, a goal of the World Health Organization.
Professor K. Srinath Reddy, President of the Public Health Foundation of India (PHFI), pictured in his office in Gurugram on December 8, 2021.
As the threat of a third wave looms over India, with the Omicron variant raising new concerns, PHFI continues to work with the public and private sectors to ensure wider and more equitable access to vaccines in the country.
“We had challenges, sure, because things weren’t always easy,†Reddy said. “But the fact that we are making progress in anchoring public health very firmly in the policy arena – it has been a success. This was happening before the pandemic even hit, but now everyone recognizes the importance of public health. “
Disclosure: This story was made possible with funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. It was produced with complete editorial independence.
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