Discussion

 In this report on managing across the organisational and cultural boundaries, the importance of collaboration will be discussed as it has proven to be an effective means particularly within the crisis incidents. During the COVID-19 pandemic, countries are facing the real challenges at the different level such as social, economic, education, health and so on. In order to resolve the same, joining the efforts among the various actions can help in diluting the challenges. The wave of COVID-19 pandemic have landed major challenges to every country, especially at the healthcare level where they were not fully prepared to address the challenges (Wang and Zhao 2021). There was a high demand for collaboration among the local health authority and the World Health Organisation (WHO) for facing such unprecedented pandemic within the era. The aim of this report is to provide the bases for such collaboration along with their advantages, the main goals and objectives for such collaboration as well as challenges which are being faced especially at the trust level. In addition to that an in-depth discussion of the national health cooperation in relations to the access of vaccine and in which manner it has to be promoted for gaining stakeholders’ trust within such a process (Al-Motlaq et al. 2021).

During the pandemics which took place during the 19^th century, which was further followed by the globalisation as well as military and commercial activities, during the sanitary conferences, the countries have agreed to collaborate for fighting infectious disease. This formal collaboration in the healthcare department has been instituted by the World Health Organisation which was founded in the year 1948, which is a special agency responsible for giving international responsibilities as well as legal mandates over the international matter of public health, for instance, the cross-border disease spreading. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the value of the international collaboration and cooperation has become high and importance has been widely supported, in the World Health Assembly which was convened in the year 2020, May where the member states stated their resolution focusing the demand for resource distribution, solidarity as well as collective actions. Several individual members agreed to these where their aimed for their countries to increase their collaboration. More than 60% of the members states that there is a need for a higher international collaboration in order to reduce the number of cases for COVID-19. Even the individuals agreed that each government need to prove their solidarity during the era of COVID-19 pandemic (Ahmad, Haroon and Hui 2020).

Goals of Collaboration

The bases or reasons for such international collaboration is to maintain logical, clear and enduring the essentially unaltered from their original conceptualisation which they had during their 1800s, where three major aspects where followed by majority of the countries. The first base is that there are several lies between the nations which creates a collective risk for healthcare aspect which are challenge to maintain in an independent manner. The increasing spread of the SARS-CoV-2 has portrayed that the close connections among the countries as well as poor management of the social and economic cost will further contribute towards such dangerous fate and results. The second base is that sharing the experience and knowledge will help in the acceleration of the facilitations and learning of towards an enhanced rapid progress (Banda et al. 2021).

Knowledge and information on the pathogens, the manner in which they are transmitting, the factors which are provoking the disease as well as the potential interventions which can implemented for such a pathogen are all those aspects which the public healthcare professionals as well as researchers can gain advantage from as they get others’ experience on the same study. The third base is that by agreeing to the standards and rules which supports the comparability of the information, supports the establishment of the good and faithful practices as well as for underpinning of a shared understanding and development of mutual trust. All of these three bases or reasons will drive various nations in order to collaborate and the reflection into their development of the World Health Organisation, which is the central authority as well as World Health Assembly (WHA) which will serve on the forum for the countries towards sharing the information and data, take collective decision as well as debate on the major issues and challenges (Travaglino 2020).

The goals of such international collaboration is to bring together all the private and public sector in order to accelerate their development, equitability and production of global access to the new COVID-19 crucial healthcare technologies. Through the multi-stakeholder and multi-lateral cooperation, continuous and crucial support will be provided for rapid deployment and development of the effective and safe diagnostics for COID-19 can be conducted along with vaccines and therapeutics while making sure that there is global equitable access to such facilities. The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the essential need for the international scientific collaboration among the private and public sector in order to tackle the health emergencies, which required open exchange and rapid access to the information, data and samples (Righetti, Rossi and Marino 2021).

Challenges of Collaboration

By getting timely and open access to the sequence of genome of the upcoming coronavirus through a global collaboration within the scientific community can help in the early initiation of the development of diagnostic, treatment and vaccines against the COVID-19 pandemic. Through rapid sharing of the genetic sequence of the coronavirus can helps in measuring the real time progress within the understanding on the new disease of COVID-19 an enable the scientists who are present globally within the private and public sector to research on the immediate matters and work for their countermeasures. Such international mobilization on an immediate basis through cross-border collaboration can help in building an existing cooperation among the private and public sectors scientist throughout the world on a daily basis and pooling the skills, resources, and knowledge in order to develop global scientific solutions (Liu et al. 2020).

The goal of such international collaboration is to support the currently going on public and private research efforts in order to counter the coronavirus as well as to make preparations against any future epidemic which might harm human health. The goal is to continuously support as well as strengthen the international network of scientific research collaboration by forming a global research community, making sure that the regulations and policies do not affect the effectiveness, cross-border accessibility, timely exchange of the scientific information, physical along with making sure that there is an open exchange of information and physical samples and property is alliteration and support to the international research collaboration as well as information exchange on a daily basis (Wang, Ma and Zhao 2020).

However, despite the logical imperative towards international collaboration as well as long past of attempting towards such collaboration, one year within the COVID-19 pandemic, the transmission of the virus is ever increasing where hundred millions of cases as well as two million death prevailed by the month of January, 2021. Such present devastation had increased in the question about the effectiveness of such international collaboration within the health care aspect and have highlights on several organisations such as World Health Organisation and various other multi-lateral agencies who have their interest in controlling the disease (Gangadhar and Shaikh 2020). There have been enquiry on the responses made by WHO and the interim finding turned to be critical for the organisation. Alongside that, WHO made a warning about the vaccine nationalism by the member states as it will lead toward the failure of morality. There independent committees made statement relating to the politicisation of the pandemic response and that WHO cannot success expect for a larger collaboration by the member states (Bump, Friberg and Harper 2021).

International Collaboration and the COVID-19 Pandemic

For bringing international collaboration among the member states, it was one of the crucial responsibilities of the WHO to notify the emergence as well as spread of such an infectious and grave disease, however, in reacted in a slow pace during the initial phase when the news of outbreak in Wuhan, China took place. After picking different media statement from the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission after which they notified through their Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network which consist of major health care institutes in public sector and laboratories present globally (Taskin et al. 2020).

However, the major challenge turns when WHO exemplifies that there are different level of reluctance from the member states when it comes to fully trust the other. Such as several member states did not granted the international organisation the power to scrutinise their national data, even during investigation about the infectious disease, despite passing resolutions on the requirement for solidarity for their response towards COVID-19, wherein several of the member states have chosen their own self-oriented path (Kyhlstedt and Andersson 2020).

WHO made a strong advice when it came to nationalism of the vaccines, however, several of the regional and national blocks have been seeking towards monopolising to their promised candidates. Such a nationalistic competition has increased over the present medicines as well which are providing potential advantage to a COVID-19 affected patient as well (White 2020). Several of the member states have forgone their cooperation and collaboration and even slowed their efforts and supports when WHO organisation a common development pool for the vaccines. There has been consistent tension among the member states which reflects their inequalities within the international governance of the health which has been utilised to exploit the weaker nations and WHO systematically, after the identification of the present world economic order as one of the key threat to the wellbeing and health (Moti and Ter Goon 2020).

The afterwards national action cooperation, especially with regards to the easy and quick access to the vaccine along with the manner of promotion of the stakeholder’s trust within such a process. As the member states have expressed their constrains in the form of ethical, economic and practical imperatives they have enabled other multilaterals in order to embrace these health agenda aspects. The World Bank   has directly engages within the global infectious disease control through the pandemic emergency facilities through financing by issuing pandemic bonds. The major UN member states have established newer organisation which are defining the mission narrowly for strengthening WHO (Liu et al. 2021).

National Health Cooperation and Vaccine Access

The Global Fund to fight AIDS, TB and Malaria and Gavi the Vaccine Alliance which was established in the 2000s about the health priorities reflecting through their name. Both the institutions have their governance structures which are more flexible and inclusive when compared to the member states model within the UN agencies who emphasise on the aspects of the specific agreement among the key donors. The Gavi has been taking initiatives through public and private partnership in order to increase the vaccine access within the lower income countries which includes a process through a pooled advanced and procured market commitments. The expectations related to the vaccine of the COVID-19 pandemic suggests the clear role for the Gavi institution to perform who will be co-leading the major vaccine pillar of ACT Accelerator, Covax (Krause et al. 2020).

However, the membership to Covax is option because 189 countries has participated including China and 92 lower income countries. The Covax facilities aims towards a well-placement of their cross-subsidise vaccines for the lower income countries, where they can explore other independent options available. Gavi’s aim is to conduct market focus ethical as well as regulatory issue and access of vaccine during the time of nationalistic competition towards to the vaccine. The development made by the COVID-19 vaccine has been a success where they have been vaccination majority of the global population while facing challenges such as attaining and maintaining the public trust on the COVID-19 vaccine as well as vaccination (Pahalagedara 2020).

The trust within the vaccination depends on the ability of the government and international institution to communicate as well as successfully conduct vaccination program, where they are dependent on the extend at which the government can maintain and instil the public confidence within the safety and effectiveness of the vaccine the reliability and competence of the international institution to deliver them to the mas, the processes and principles which will guide the government actions and decision in the vaccine distribution, procurement, prioritisation and administration. In addition to that it is heavily dependent on the effectiveness and capacity of the regulatory agencies while handling issues as well as communicating consistently as the events increase while at the same time retaining the public confidence within their review processes and the effective of communication and public engagement (Grammes et al. 2020).

Conclusion

The COVID-19 pandemic has showed the reason why it is essential for the nations to collaborate and cooperate within the healthcare aspect as well as the hazards which are associated with incomplete commitments. The members’ states have failed to prioritise the common goals and restricted WHO to conduct meaning oversight of the national information which endangered the global health security through the completion of the vaccine instead of allocating in an equitable manner. Due to the lack of verification of the national data has advanced their estimation, where WHO was prevented from maintaining their primacy of the technical competence over the self-interest of certain member states. Meaning and well-placed international collaboration is an essential part towards adopting immediate action which needs to eliminate certain aspects such as member states to stop systematically weakening the approaches of WHO, there must be independent support to WHO and to uphold participation, fairness and accountability by providing WHO the power and accountability.

References

Ahmad, T., Haroon, M.B. and Hui, J., 2020. Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic and economic impact. Pakistan journal of medical sciences, 36(COVID19-S4), p.S73.

Al-Motlaq, M., Neill, S., Foster, M.J., Coyne, I., Houghton, D., Angelhoff, C., Rising-Holmström, M. and Majamanda, M., 2021. Position statement of the international network for child and family centered care: Child and family centred care during the COVID19 pandemic. Journal of Pediatric Nursing, 61, pp.140-143.

Banda, J.M., Tekumalla, R., Wang, G., Yu, J., Liu, T., Ding, Y., Artemova, E., Tutubalina, E. and Chowell, G., 2021. A large-scale COVID-19 Twitter chatter dataset for open scientific research—an international collaboration. Epidemiologia, 2(3), pp.315-324.

Bump, J.B., Friberg, P. and Harper, D.R., 2021. International collaboration and covid-19: what are we doing and where are we going?. bmj, 372.

Gangadhar, V.R. and Shaikh, A., 2020. Small and medium enterprises and cloud technology–challenges and opportunities during COVID19. International Research Journal on Advanced Science Hub, 2, pp.32-38.

Grammes, N., Millenaar, D., Fehlmann, T., Kern, F., Böhm, M., Mahfoud, F. and Keller, A., 2020. Research output and international cooperation among countries during the COVID-19 pandemic: Scientometric analysis. Journal of medical Internet research, 22(12), p.e24514.

Krause, P., Fleming, T.R., Longini, I., Henao-Restrepo, A.M., Peto, R., Dean, N.E., Halloran, M.E., Huang, Y., Fleming, T.R., Gilbert, P.B. and DeGruttola, V., 2020. COVID-19 vaccine trials should seek worthwhile efficacy. The Lancet, 396(10253), pp.741-743.

Kyhlstedt, M. and Andersson, S.W., 2020. Diagnostic and digital solutions to address the COVID-19 pandemic: the need for international collaboration to close the gap. Health Policy and Technology, 9(2), p.126.

Liu, M., Bu, Y., Chen, C., Xu, J., Li, D., Leng, Y., Freeman, R.B., Meyer, E., Yoon, W., Sung, M. and Jeong, M., 2020. Can pandemics transform scientific novelty? Evidence from COVID-19. arXiv preprint arXiv:2009.12500.

Liu, M., Bu, Y., Chen, C., Xu, J., Li, D., Leng, Y., Freeman, R.B., Meyer, E.T., Yoon, W., Sung, M. and Jeong, M., 2021. Pandemics are catalysts of scientific novelty: Evidence from COVID?19. Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology.

Moti, U.G. and Ter Goon, D., 2020. Novel Coronavirus Disease: A delicate balancing act between health and the economy. Pakistan journal of medical sciences, 36(COVID19-S4), p.S134.

Pahalagedara, L., 2020. Battle with COVID19.

Righetti, N., Rossi, L. and Marino, G., 2021. The 2020 Research on Problematic Information on the COVID19 Pandemic. A Systematic Literature Review.

Taskin, Z., Dogan, G., Kulczycki, E. and Zuccala, A.A., 2020. COVID19 Research for the English-Speaking World: Health Communication During a Pandemic.

Travaglino, G.A., 2020. How is the COVID19 Pandemic Affecting Europeans’ Lives?.

Wang, Y. and Zhao, H., 2021. Digital data-based strategies: A novel form of better understanding COVID-19 pandemic and international scientific collaboration. PloS one, 16(4), p.e0249280.

Wang, Y., Ma, J. and Zhao, H., 2020. Transdisciplinary Conversation on International Collaboration and Global COVID-19 Pandemic Through Digital Data-Based Strategies. Available at SSRN 3705282.

White, A., 2020. May you live in interesting times: a reflection on academic integrity and accounting assessment during COVID19 and online learning. Accounting Research Journal.