Hello delegates,
As you all know, one very important aspect of this committee is planning and executing an effective, inclusive, and equitable rollout of HIV/AIDS medications and drugs. Of course getting support from the current administration is one essential step, but an effective rollout is more nuanced than just that (as evident with the current distribution of COVID-19 vaccines). So below I will highlight two commendable drug distribution efforts that will hopefully provide you with some insight on the intricacies of this important process.
H1N1 Pandemic: While the response to the H1N1 (or Swine Flu) pandemic was not the strongest, leaders across the globe were able to effectively respond to it before it blew to the proportions of the current COVID-19 outbreak. In the United States this pandemic was the first time that states had to take part in a mass vaccine rollout campaign. States were tasked with distributing the vaccines, and those that leveraged local/county health departments, who better understood (1) the best ways to distribute the vaccine and (2) which communities needed the vaccine the most, produced a stronger response to the pandemic. The US also had a strong allocation plan through increased dialogue between state and local officials, using more flexible allocation methods (i.e. distributing to a wide range of locations like colleges/universities, hospitals, public health clinics, etc), and using all available data (epidemiological, population, etc.).
NYC Smallpox Outbreak: New York City’s handling of the 1947 smallpox outbreak is often lauded as one of the best handlings of an infectious disease in modern history, vaccinating 5 million people in just a few weeks. While a lot of what went into this vaccine rollout is not applicable to every drug distribution effort, the trust the government was able to instill in their constituency was essential to containing the issue at hand. Since the outbreak transpired after World War II, the public had a good amount of trust in the government, which made vaccinating millions of people much easier to achieve.
While HIV/AIDS is not an airborne disease that only requires a vaccine to be cured, the rollout of drugs, vaccines, and medications all share similar strategies. In both of the above examples, it is clear that there are certain strategies and methods that can be leveraged to produce a better response to the ongoing health crisis; establishing strong distribution capabilities, a comprehensive allocation plan, and establishing trust with the public are all necessary to properly combat the HIV/AIDS crisis. I hope to see some or all of these strategies implemented throughout the conference.
I think that the most effective plan to help for a faster and more efficient rollout of drugs and medications to combat HIV/AIDS would be one that is more focused on the business and media, because the government is only able to do so much. I think that even during this pandemic, with many governments not having a smart response to Covid would be something the South African people would also acknowledge, and they would most likely want the government to have treatment as fast as possible. The government has done a good job in the past decade or so decreasing the number of new cases of HIV/AIDS each year from 500,000 to around 200,000. Adding on to this step, I believe that it is necessary to have the businesses focused on bringing out more medicine to help contain HIV/AIDS, and one of the ways to do this would be to put time caps on the amount of government money given as a reward. Businesses, however they may present themselves, are still most focused on earning money, and they know that the time when they sell the medicine doesn't matter, so we believe that having more economic incentives for the businesses to produce ARVs and such faster would be more effective. We would also propose the use of higher media coverage, which may include things like journalism and newspapers to help shine more light on this topic. I believe that with the government, pharmaceutical businesses, and the press covering these topics together, we would be able to solve this problem most effectively.
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