FIND’s Intervention on Global Readiness, Access to Medical Countermeasures and Vaccine Production at Plenary Session 1 of the 4th G20 Health Working Group meeting 

Delivered by Dr Ifedayo Adetifa

10 June 2025

FIND welcomes the G20’s continued leadership on pandemic prevention, preparedness, and response. As an organization dedicated to advancing equitable access to diagnostics, we urge that diagnostics be placed on equal footing with vaccines and therapeutics as a core pillar of health emergency preparedness.

Our experience during COVID-19, as co-lead of the diagnostics pillar of the ACT-Accelerator, supporting access to 120 million rapid tests for LMICs, underscored that timely and accurate diagnostics are essential for effective response. Yet the pandemic also laid bare deep structural inequities. FIND’s Pathogen Diagnostic Readiness Index, which assesses 21 high-impact pathogens, shows that only SARS-CoV-2 has adequate diagnostic preparedness today.

As stressed during yesterday’s technical discussions, achieving the 100 Days Mission requires full-spectrum readiness: sustained R&D investment, regulatory agility, distributed manufacturing, and development of tools that are locally relevant, multiplexed, digitally connected, and linked to treatment. Innovation must be rooted in equity and matched with access at every stage of development, financing, and deployment.

To this end, we call on the G20 to commit to the following:

1. Investing in regional manufacturing and locally led diagnostic innovation ecosystems;
2. Prioritising & facilitating pooled procurement from regional manufacturers to ensure sustainable local production of diagnostics and other medical counter measures;
3. Advancing regulatory reliance and harmonised approval pathways.

Thank you.