Please join us for the final session in our series, a discussion on the learning from COVID vaccine development, production, and distribution and how we can build on our experience going forward – What has COVID taught us about how to get everyone on the planet vaccinated? What is essential for success? What to avoid? How do we build trust?
About Our Speakers:
Ayman Chit has spent his career leading both professional and research teams in the fields of R&D, health economics, epidemiology, market access and medical affairs working to advance the development and access to medicines and vaccines around the world. While he has had the privilege of working in multiple therapeutic areas such as Oncology and immunology, vaccines have been a passion and focus for him where today he leads a Medical Affairs organization responsible for the International Region (Asia, Africa Middle East Eurasia, and Latin America) at Sanofi Pasteur (Sanofi’s vaccines business). Ayman has both worked and lived in Canada, the United States and Europe, spending seven years at GlaxoSmithKline and is currently serving his tenth year at sanofi. Alongside his industry appointments he has always served as a lecture and associate professor at the University of Toronto’s Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy.
France Dubé is Director, Global Oncology Policy, Precision Medicine with Astra Zeneca. From September 2016 to December 2021, she was the Director, Government Affairs and Public Policy at Astra Zeneca Canada. She received her B.Sc. in Pharmacy Degree from Dalhousie University. After a 10 year career as a pharmacist with Shoppers Drug Mart, holding various roles at the retail level and then at the head office level, she decided to make a change and joined the pharmaceutical industry. She was at Eli Lilly for 16 years, the first half of her career located in Atlantic Canada, and the last half in Toronto. For 11 of those 16 years at Eli Lilly, her roles were within market access/government affairs. Her current role at Astra Zeneca is focused on healthcare and pharmaceutical policy issues, including innovative value strategies, promoting strong and vibrant lifesciences sector, global and local clinical trials and r&d investments, and timely access and reimbursement of innovative medicines.
In the many years involved in the healthcare and pharmaceutical sector, France has sought inclusivity of the many stakeholders involved, seeking to find lasting, effective and helpful solutions to ensure sustainability and resiliency of healthcare systems.
Mark Feinberg, M.D., Ph.D., is president and CEO of the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI) where he leads a global team working to advance the development of vaccines and other biomedical innovations to protect against infection with HIV, TB, and other infectious diseases that disproportionately impact lowincome countries. Prior to joining IAVI in late 2015, Feinberg served as chief public health and science officer with Merck Vaccines. In this role, he helped advance the development and global availability of vaccines against rotavirus, human papillomavirus, and other infectious diseases. He also led a range of research initiatives to address unmet health needs in low-income countries including the establishment of the MSD-Wellcome Trust Hilleman Laboratories and the coordination of a private-public partnership to expedite Ebola vaccine development. Previously, he spent more than 20 years exploring HIV/AIDS pathogenesis, treatment, and prevention research and the biology of emerging diseases in both academia and government.
Derrick Sim is the Director of Vaccine Supply & Demand at Gavi, the Vaccines Alliance in Geneva, and leads the COVAX Facility’s Deals and Transactions Team to secure COVID-19 vaccines for their equitable distribution globally. Over a billion doses of these vaccines have now been delivered to over 140 countries globally.
He has over 18 years experience in the vaccines industry having managed their commercialization, launch and development at global and regional levels. Prior to Gavi, he led GlaxoSmithKline’s global pneumococcal and rotavirus vaccines businesses from London and Brussels. He has experience working with policy makers and governments, including those in the Asia Pacific region during the 2009 H1N1 influenza pandemic, on their national vaccine programmes. His understanding of the challenges faced by low and middle income communities in accessing health care has been shaped by several years in Manila where he introduced several initiatives to increase access as head of GlaxoSmithKline’s vaccines business. Derrick also contributed to the launch of the HPV cervical cancer vaccine and phase 3 clinical development and licensure of the rotavirus vaccine while leading the Asia Pacific regional medical affairs in Singapore.
Derrick began his professional life at the Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne as a medical doctor, where his interest in vaccines was ignited after being involved in phase 2 and 3 clinical research at the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute, and holds an MBA from the Melbourne Business School, Australia. https://www.gavi.org/covax-facility www.gavi.org
Watch Video Recording here