Improved and more equitable access to health products

products within the framework of patient-centred health care services; optimize pricing, procurement and supply chain policies for health products; adapt and implement pricing policies based on recently updated WHO guidelines to ensure affordability and equitable access to health products for all; assess and improve national procurement and supply chain systems for health products, including locally produced emergency health kits or donated supplies, while also providing for their correct disposal; and develop comprehensive and integrated logistics management information systems for all essential health products. In producing global public health goods, the Secretariat will: compile market information to enhance transparency and achieve fair pricing of health products and reduce costs for both governments and individuals; develop a web-based repository to share information at global and/or regional levels to enhance the transparency of the pricing of health products, ensuring adequate availability of data on inputs throughout the health product value chain (including on clinical trial data, price information, investments, incentives and subsidies); develop guidance for improving sustained and equitable access to health products through improved procurement mechanisms, including forecasting, price negotiation, pooled procurement, and managing shortages and stockouts; develop guidance for strengthening the sustainable local production of quality, safe and effective health products; generate research products on local production of the health products needed for the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of COVID-19 and how these pandemic-specific mechanisms may support the local production of other health products; generate reports on the global demand-and-supply prospects for individual vaccines, using data gathered via the vaccine-specific market studies of the Market Information for Access to Vaccines initiative; generate guidance on the availability and price of medicines and other health products, based on the WHO Essential Medicines and Health Products Price and Availability Monitoring Mobile Application and other tools, in order to inform national policies on improving access to health products; and generate research products on issues related to access to, and the rational and safe use of, health products across the life course, including with respect to the health of women, newborns, children, adolescents, men and older people.