Instead of bluntly recommending against self-testing, WHO should address its specific concerns directly with complementary recommendations that ensure countries pair access to self-tests with knowledge that empowers people to properly collect their sample, notify positive test results to public health bodies and understand the risk of false negatives. Additionally, WHO should recommend that health authorities must incentivise people to report their results and engage with the health system by offering supportive care, treatment options, and PPE to all those who need them, reads the open letter.
The open letter calls upon the WHO that its forthcoming guideline on COVID-19 diagnostics should recommend self-tests as a screening strategy on the basis of emerging yet strong evidence of the benefit to individual, community and population health and rights.
The open letter says that in the absence of urgent action by WHO, national health systems and individual people have already begun to use and rely on self-testing as a risk management tool for avoiding exposing others, and to manage individual risk as well as to increase national diagnostic capacity. No health system should be waiting for WHO to overcome its conservative approach to the evidence. Accordingly, even in the absence of WHO guidance, countries need to act- in particular, if countries are buying antivirals, they need to ensure they have a testing strategy that is able to support their treatment strategy.
By acting with urgency now, WHO can help ensure that supportive public health messaging and complementary strategies are properly designed and emphasised by national health authorities recommending self-testing and implementing programmes to make rapid antigen detection tests accessible, states the open letter.
The over one hundred organizations that are signatories to this open letter, include: Amnesty International, AVAC, CNS (Citizen News Service), Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative, Global Network of People Living with HIV, Global Network of Sex Work Projects, Health Global Access Project (Health GAP), Health Justice Initiative South Africa, International Community of Women Living with HIV/AIDS (ICW) Latina, International Treatment Preparedness Coalition, Oxfam, Partners in Health (PIH), Third World Network, Treatment Action Group, Treatment Advocacy and Literacy Campaign Zambia, among others.
Prominent global health experts, who have endorsed the letter, include: Dr Madhukar Pai, McGill University; Mark Harrington, Treatment Action Group; Sharonann Lynch, O'Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law, Georgetown University; Mitchell Warren, AVAC; Bobby Ramakant, CNS; Dr Chris Beyrer, Desmond Tutu Professor in Public Health and Human Rights, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health; Gregg Gonsalves, Yale School of Public Health; Dr Kenneth Mayer, Harvard Medical School; Mercy Annapoorani, Blossom Trust India; among others.
Shobha Shukla, Bobby Ramakant - CNS (Citizen News Service)
(Shobha Shukla and Bobby Ramakant lead the editorial team at CNS (Citizen News Service). Follow them on Twitter @Shobha1Shukla and @BobbyRamakant)
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