SDGs Goal 3: Best Practices by Japanese Companies
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All efforts related to the COVID-19 are included in the SDGs Goal 3: Good health and well-being. Manufacture of masks and disinfectants, development of online diagnosis systems and remote access system to work from home are essential for prevention. Furthermore, the most important milestone is development of medicine for the disease. Of course, no company will announce the link to Goal 3 in order to take these actions, since it is an emergency. Rather, we should focus on how the world will change closely related to Goal 17: Partnerships for the goals, after overcoming the crisis. I would like to touch on this point again in the post for the Goal 17.
In this post, I would like to overview other issues. Solutions to the Goal 3 are mainly divided into 1) the spread of basic health systems in emerging countries and 2) efforts in developed countries.
In particular, emerging countries may lack a variety of infrastructure that is common place in developed countries. The main focus of this Goal is to rectify this shortage.
The shortage of medicines is also serious. It takes a lot of time and effort to develop it, the price of medicines has increased, which patients in emerging countries cannot afford.
In 2012, the Global Health Technology Promotion Fund (GHIT Fund) was established in cooperation with governments, companies and foundations to promote the development of new drugs. The full partners who have contributed to the fund include well-established Japanese pharmaceutical manufacturers such as Astellas Pharma, Chugai Pharmaceutical, Daiichi Sankyo, Eisai, Shionogi, and Takeda.
Sysmex, an associate partner of the GHIT Fund, is also passionate about healthcare issues in emerging countries. The company is a leading manufacturer of inspection equipment. There are some news stories that it takes more time to get the results from the recent PCR (polymerase chain reaction) test than expected. The company's inspection equipment contributes to the efficiency of such inspections. In addition, because machine conducts inspections, they reduce the risk of human infection.
Sysmex is taking up its own efforts to test HIV/AIDS and malaria among the three major infectious diseases. The company's equipment enable a short inspection of three minutes or one minute.
In addition, even if equipment is introduced in emerging countries, the effect will be limited if it is not used appropriately. Therefore it is actively supporting the staff and systems involved in inspections such as introduction of quality control systems in Ghana and Namibia, training staff, academic support in Asia, and support for inspection systems at the national level.