A systematic review of strategies adopted to scale up COVID-19 testing in low-, middle- and high-income countries.

OBJECTIVE: We undertook a systematic review of strategies adopted to scale up COVID-19 testing in countries across income levels to identify successful approaches and facilitate learning. METHODS: Scholarly articles in English from PubMed, Google scholar and Google search engine describing strategies used to increase COVID-19 testing in countries were reviewed. Deductive analysis to allocate relevant text from the reviewed publications/reports to the a priori themes was done. MAIN RESULTS: The review covered 32 countries, including 11 high-income, 2 upper-middle-income, 13 lower-middle-income and 6 low-income countries. Most low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) increased the number of laboratories available for testing and deployed sample collection and shipment to the available laboratories. The high-income countries (HICs) that is, South Korea, Germany, Singapore and USA developed molecular diagnostics with accompanying regulatory and legislative framework adjustments to ensure the rapid development and use of the tests. HICs like South Korea leveraged existing manufacturing systems to develop tests, while the LMICs leveraged existing national disease control programmes (HIV, tuberculosis, malaria) to increase testing. Continent-wide, African Centres for Disease Control and Prevention-led collaborations increased testing across most African countries through building capacity by providing testing kits and training. CONCLUSION: Strategies taken appear to reflect the existing systems or economies of scale that a particular country could leverage. LMICs, for example, drew on the infectious disease control programmes already in place to harness expertise and laboratory capacity for COVID-19 testing. There however might have been strategies adopted by other countries but were never published and thus did not appear anywhere in the searched databases.

International corporate tax avoidance and domestic government health expenditure.

OBJECTIVE: To compare estimated losses from international corporate tax avoidance in individual countries and domestic government health expenditure, with reference to the annual threshold of 86 United States dollars (US$) per capita required to achieve universal health coverage. METHODS: I obtained and compared estimates of international corporate tax avoidance and domestic government health expenditure for 2013. FINDINGS: Data were available for 100 countries: 24 low-, 28 lower-middle-, 21 upper-middle- and 27 high-income countries. Domestic government health expenditure was under US$ 86 per capita in all 24 low-income countries and in 24 of 28 lower-middle-income countries. International corporate tax lost per capita was higher than domestic government health expenditure in 19 low-income and 10 lower-middle-income countries. If the revenue lost to tax avoidance were recouped and allocated to the health sector, average annual government health expenditure could increase from US$ 8 to US$ 24 per capita in the low-income countries studied and from US$ 54 to US$ 91 per capita in the lower-middle-income countries. CONCLUSION: Recouping losses due to international corporate tax avoidance and allocating them to the health sector would help low- and lower-middle-income countries achieve universal health coverage, a target of sustainable development goal (SDG) 3. Tackling tax avoidance requires cooperation between the governments of all countries, multinational corporations and investors, including private individuals. International cooperation to improve domestic resource mobilization is the focus of SDG target 17.1.

Using international human rights law to improve child health in low-income countries: a framework for healthcare professionals.

BACKGROUND: The Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights states that the right to health is closely related to, and dependent upon, the realization of other human rights, including the right to food, water, education and shelter which are important determinants of health. Children's healthcare workers in low income settings may spend the majority of their professional lives trying to mitigate deficiencies of these rights but have little influence over them. In order to advocate successfully at a local level, we should be aware of the proportion of children living in our catchment population who do not have access to their basic rights. In order to carry out a rights audit, a framework within which healthcare workers could play their part is required, as is an agreed minimum core of rights, a timeframe and a set of indicators. DISCUSSION: A framework to assess how well states and their developmental partners are adhering to human rights principles is discussed, including the role that a healthcare worker might optimally play. A minimum core of economic and social rights seeks to establish a legal minimum set of protections, which should be available with immediate effect and applicable to all nations despite very different resources. Minimum core rights and the impact that progressive realisation may have had on the right to health is discussed, including what they should include from the perspective of children's health. A set of absolute rights are suggested, based on physiological needs and aligned with the corresponding articles of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. The development indicators which are likely to be used to monitor progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals is suggested as a way to monitor rights. We consider the ways in which the healthcare worker could use a rights audit to advocate with, and for their community. These audits could achieve several objectives. They may legitimise healthcare workers' interests in the determinants of health and, as they are often highly respected by their community, this may facilitate them to be agents for change at a local level. This may raise awareness on basic human rights and their importance to health and contribute to a needed change in mind-set from one of development needs to absolute rights. The results may catalyse colleagues to analyse further the upstream reasons why children, and the families in which they live, are not having their rights met.