Dr Phanuphak calls for uniting our community power in the Global South and leverage upon our regional purchasing power to negotiate lowest possible prices for quality assured screening and diagnostic tools and generic medicines - especially those developed in the Global South. She also underlines the importance of taking services for multiple diseases and health conditions to the communities in people-centred and rights-based manner.
She says that when a health technology is approved by the regulators, it should be developed and made accessible to the people in the Global South without any delay. Not doing so, is not acceptable.
1st Asia Pacific Conference on Point-of-Care Diagnostics for Infectious Diseases was held in Australia. Dr Phanuphak was among those who worked hard to bring the 2nd POC 2025 to Thailand which will be held during 19-21 June 2025 with her being its convener.
She rightly calls for deploying scientifically validated point-of-care health tools closer to the communities to strengthen multiple disease responses, such as for TB, HIV, STIs, vector-borne diseases like malaria or dengue, hepatitis, HPV, among others.
She calls for accelerating innovations in developing more health technologies to serve the most-in-need communities in a rights-based, gender transformative and people-centred manner. "Point-of-care technologies is not only limited to testing for example, but also point-of-care sample collection tools too, so that sample collection not only gets enhanced but also it can be done in a way that it becomes self-care. We should not have to rely on people going to healthcare facilities for sample collection by healthcare providers, but if science-based tools become available, then sample collection can perhaps be done by the clients themselves and sent to the nearest testing centre."
"We cannot talk about new point-of-care technologies without talking about game-changing health financing, policies and political commitment too. At the POC 2025, I hope that we can bring all these aspects together so that we can not only transition in deploying point-of-care health technologies where they are needed most in people-centred manner, but also how can we sustain the implementation," she said.
Integration may not mean the same for everyone
Dr Phanuphak reflects that integration may have different meanings for different people. "A programme manager may think of integrating services together, such as those for TB and HIV. For grant managers it may mean integrating testing platforms, such as those for TB and HIV. We have seen on the ground already that community-led clinics have naturally integrated HIV, hepatitis and STIs services to serve people better. Lay providers have also gone beyond the laboratory integration by integrating mental health, harm reduction, social and legal services."
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