The Quad Health Security Partnership
At the 2023 Quad Leaders’ Summit, Quad Leaders decided to evolve the Quad’s former Vaccine Partnership into a more comprehensive Health Security Partnership, tackling a range of health security priorities in a coordinated and integrated way. The Quad Health Security Partnership promotes coordination and collaboration between Quad countries and partners in the Indo-Pacific to strengthen regional, and therefore global, health security. It builds on successful collective efforts to provide safe and effective COVID-19 vaccines to the Indo-Pacific and beyond, as well as the Quad’s broader support for economic recovery and revitalisation.
Strengthening capabilities in the Indo-Pacific to detect and respond to disease outbreaks
As the first priority of the new Quad Health Security Partnership, Leaders announced at the 2023 Quad Leaders’ Summit, a package of measures to strengthen the Indo-Pacific’s ability to detect and respond to outbreaks of diseases with epidemic or pandemic potential. They committed funding to support field epidemiology and outbreak responder training, boost disease surveillance, improve data systems and strengthen public health laboratories.
Technical engagement to support health security
Quad partners have been bringing technical experts together to support improved regional health security beyond COVID-19 vaccine supply. Activities have included convening an event on combatting vaccine hesitancy in the margins of the 75th World Health Assembly and arranging the first pandemic preparedness tabletop exercise for senior Quad officials. Quad partners have also been exploring scope for collaboration on clinical trials and genomic surveillance.
Expanding vaccine access in the Indo-Pacific
Consistent with the commitments Quad Leaders made in March 2021, Quad partners have significantly improved access to COVID-19 vaccines in the Indo-Pacific, including through support for vaccine manufacturing, technical assistance to national medicines regulatory agencies and ministries of health, and the provision of vaccines, consumables and cold-chain infrastructure, either directly or through multilateral channels including COVAX. The Quad’s contributions to regional and global COVID-19 vaccine access include providing US $5.6 billion to the COVAX Advance Market Commitment (AMC) for vaccine supply to low- and middle-income countries; sharing more than 400 million vaccine doses with Indo-Pacific countries and almost 800 million globally; funding expanded vaccine manufacturing in the region; and providing extensive ‘last mile’ delivery support to national vaccination programs.
