The comment piece, published in The Lancet Global Health, was signed by 55 signatories from across 20 countries.
Enormous emergency efforts are underway to find optimal medical products, to prevent, diagnose, and treat COVID-19, which approximately 7.8 billion people will depend on. With significant disruption of pharmaceutical production and supply, and increasing numbers of falsified and substandard products, strategic planning is needed now to ensure global access to quality-assured medical products and monitoring of supply chains.
Co-author Professor Paul Newton, who leads Medicine Quality at IDDO, said: ‘Vital interventions are needed to ensure global manufacture, access, protection, and monitoring of supply chains.