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💥 Take Quick Action! Opportunities to create impact with a quick action are marked with a 💥 throughout the Playbook!
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The health world convened in Berlin for the World Health Summit (WHS) this week. PAN’s Executive Director Eloise Todd dubbed it the “Glastonbury Festival of Global Health” and it delivered on inspiration, connections, partnerships, and action! Here’s our quick take on the highlights:
- Trust and money. The theme of this year’s conference, “Building Trust for a Healthier World” highlighted the challenge of advancing health resilience in a world fractured by broken trust. Dr. Tedros opened the Summit, “Trust itself does not make people healthy, but no one can be healthy without trust.” Pointing toward the WHO Investment Round, he added, “Everything we do depends on the trust of the communities we serve.” Brazil’s Dr. Ethel Maciel called out the need to bridge the gap between North and South, “To build trust, you need to make concessions.”
- Action is personal. The challenges — climate, inequity, finance, distrust, and conflict — are many, but as PAN’s Aggrey Aluso reflected, “Humanity has more solutions than challenges that exist currently; we just need to get our motivations right and recenter human and public interest.” Calling out how climate action is personal, The Rockefeller Foundation’s Naveen Rao rallied, “Find your personal reason for your work. Hold onto it. And let the vision of a future you are fighting for fuel your work.” 💥 Share Aggrey’s WHS recap and reflection.
- Standout statements.
- The Right Honourable Helen Clark: “Health is an investment, and if you don’t make it, your country is not going to succeed… If you don’t have a healthy population, then your society and economy won’t be productive.”
- German Minister of Health Karl Lauterbach: “Public health is ever becoming more important. We have more threats to come, so we need to be better prepared.”
- Amref’s Dr. Githinji Gitahi: “Those driving fossil fuels must stop. If they can't stop now, they must pay significantly for the damage caused. It's crucial that we have honest conversations about who should bear the cost.”
- New $$$. WHO announced US$1 billion in new and reaffirmed commitments including nearly US$700 million in new funding commitments from European countries, foundations, and others, and another US$300 million in reaffirmed commitments for WHO’s ongoing Investment Round. Wellcome announced US$25 million for climate and health as part of a US$50 million commitment to WHO.
- Stepping up for the pandemic agreement. Giving us a reason to be optimistic, parliamentarians at the UNITE Global Summit seized the opportunity to step up for the pandemic agreement, signing a global statement of support that highlights equity, global solidarity, legislative action to ratify and implement the agreement, and combat misinformation. 💥 Quick post.
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Fueling the IDA lifeline. The Economic Development Assembly (Oct. 9-10), hosted by Global Citizen and Bridgewater Associates, brought heads of state, business leaders, and civil society together to discuss how to strengthen Africa’s equitable and sustainable growth, including through the upcoming World Bank International Development Association (IDA) 21 replenishment. Through the Abidjan Accord — signed by 100+ leaders and organizations including PAN and RANA — the Assembly called for G20 countries to increase their contributions to IDA and meet the US$120 billion fundraising goal by December 2024. IDA is a critical catalyst for growth and development, especially in Africa, and is an important tool to “propel job creation and economic transformation” as well as human capital investments like health systems strengthening and resilience. The message was underscored in the Financial Times when 23 economists called for a minimum 20% increase in the IDA21 replenishment. We see and applaud the call while raising the bar to match Denmark’s 40% increase. 💥 Quick post.
Mpox — “We cannot be complacent.”
Marburg — Reason for optimism?
- Situation report. In a positive turn of events, Rwanda’s Marburg outbreak appears to be under control with the rate of new cases and deaths slowing significantly and more reported recoveries since Oct. 8. The country reported 62 confirmed cases, 15 deaths, and 30 recoveries, has performed over 4,000 tests, and administered 771 vaccines as of Oct. 15.
- Response firsts. Sabin Vaccine Institute delivered 1,000 more doses of its phase 2 Marburg vaccine candidate on Oct. 12 at the request of the Rwandan government. The shipment follows the original 700 vaccine doses delivered on Oct. 5. Rwanda and WHO launched a first-ever Marburg treatment clinical trial for Remdesivir on Oct. 15. Rwanda is in its final sequencing stages to identify the outbreak’s source and likely patient zero, which may provide more insight. Additionally, WHO published a Marburg Strategic Preparedness and Response Plan for the country that lays out a US$11 million coordination and response effort through the end of the year.
- Post-pandemic progress? Rwanda’s quick response and control of the outbreak is a testament to the country’s preparedness efforts and infrastructure investments. The country’s surveillance efforts include an early warning and surveillance system, health management information system, contact tracing, and vaccination campaigns bolstered by over 60,000 community health workers. Meanwhile, public and private health investments to expand healthcare facilities and isolation centers helped treatment and containment. Rwanda also focused on community outreach and education, which makes a difference in vaccine hesitancy. Larger picture challenges — from the far off approval of vaccines and vaccination challenges to regional vulnerabilities and international reliance — lay ahead. Although it is unclear how the outbreak will play out, “some post-pandemic lessons are clearly being learnt.”
H5N1: Moo-re action to close gaps.
Show us the money. As a part of ongoing reform efforts, the World Bank voted to increase lending capacity by US$30 billion over ten years to mitigate climate change and global challenges. The announcement, combined with pricing policy changes, means the bank will increase lending capacity by a total of US$150 billion over the next decade.
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Need a dose of good news? Read the incredible story on the staggering success of vaccines.
The Global Preparedness Monitoring Board’s annual report The Changing Face of Pandemic Risk reviews risk drivers and lays out a preparedness path forward.
ONE’s analysis of OECD data found that COVID-19 response financing covered up health aid declines — which reached a 13-year low in 2021.
Visualizing the traffic jam of replenishments, the Center for Global Development (CGD) published an interactive dataset showing donor pledges and contributions to the 13 major funds, spanning concessional multilateral development bank (MDB) funds, health funds, and climate funds, going back to 2000.
The Lancet Commission on Investing in Health’s third report is out now. Get the details in the summary brief.
The Task Force on Climate, Development and the IMF’s newly published IMF 2030 Action Agenda lays out concrete and timely Fund reforms to increase climate financing.
The mRNA program co-leaders, the Medicines Patent Pool and WHO, responded to Health Policy Watch’s article outlining program criticisms and observations.
WHO’s Estimating the Impact of Vaccines in Reducing Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) and Antibiotic Use report found that better vaccine use and investment could reduce antibiotic usage by 2.5 billion doses each year.
Some of what we’ve been reading.
Learn from Prof. Madhu Pai’s open-access Knowledge Translation, Communications, and Evidence-informed Public Health Leadership course.
Afya na Haki is hiring a senior research officer to support its mission. Apply by Nov. 5.
Have something to share with the Network? We accept communications, policy, and advocacy opportunities on a rolling basis.
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