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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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INB12 — working toward the finish line.
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INB12 negotiations kick off next week (Nov. 4-15). Notably, there will be no public statements during the opening session, and relevant stakeholder briefings will start from Tuesday onward. Each day will reserve time from “13:30 to 15:00” for critical “informal discussions" to get a meaningful commitment over the finish line. While Member States continue to disagree on critical issues, they must act with urgency and come to INB12 with the expectation of reaching a compromise to advance a final agreement, ideally before the official May 2025 deadline. Real commitments are needed on equitable access to countermeasures, technology transfer and know-how sharing, research and development transparency, regulatory harmonization and streamlining during emergencies, a One Health approach, and accountability for action. 💥 PAN and nearly twenty other partners are urging Member States to double down and come to INB12 prepared to work for consensus and action. 💥 Sign on to the statement by emailing Courtney Carson by Nov. 1, 2pm CET/9am EDT.
Record-breaking threats to people and planet. The latest Lancet Countdown on health and climate report highlights the cost of delayed action and calls for trillions spent on fossil fuels to be redirected towards protecting people’s health, lives, and livelihoods. The report underscores record-breaking climate-related health risks, including increased infectious disease spread, requiring robust health emergency preparedness and response systems to reduce the risk of outbreaks, epidemics, and pandemics. Dr. Tedros called for action, “Taking action on climate change is a matter of life and death. Our health systems, societies, and economies are under attack from a threat that we've created ourselves.” 💥 Quick post.
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French government slashes aid. The French government is risking its strong reputation in international development and climate finance by slashing aid by 34% — a disproportionately severe cut — and France intends to remove the “solidarity” aspects of key taxes. Global Citizen, Focus 2030, and other French NGOs are urging international civil society partners to sign their letter to French decision makers: 💥 TAKE ACTION and sign on.
Wind in the G20 sails?
- Progress on climate and health? This week’s Health Working Group meeting in Rio aims to advance commitments on climate and health, One Health, mpox, digital health, and pandemic PPR priorities. We’re still waiting for outcome documents, but we are expecting a climate and health declaration including commitments on One Health and AMR to be amongst outcomes.
- Strong on banks, weak on debt. G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors gathered last week, and released a communiqué ahead of the G20 Leaders’ Summit (Nov. 18-19). Highlights include an endorsement of the “G20 Roadmap toward Better, Bigger, and More Effective MDBs” (text not yet available). Warm words on pandemic financing feature strongly, including welcoming “progress on the G20/World Bank/WHO Operational Playbook for Pandemic Response Financing,” along with shoutouts for the role of the Joint Finance and Health Task Force, debt-for-health swaps, and the impending WHO and The Pandemic Fund replenishments. How these references translate to policy action and commitments is still TBD. More broadly, Finance Ministers left the door open to continue talks on taxes. While they reaffirmed “commitment to act swiftly to address global debt vulnerabilities,” they failed to advance any new solutions to the global debt crisis or any fixes to the G20 Common Framework for Debt Treatments.
- From austerity to prosperity. Under Barbados’ leadership, V20 Finance Ministers called for a “shift from from austerity to prosperity, and growth-guided climate and development investments.” A V20 communiqué endorsed initiatives and recommendations to deliver fair access to climate finance and debt solutions with relief and disaster support, while promoting resilience and sustainable development.
Mpox — forward steps for the most vulnerable.
- Situation report. The WHO mpox dashboard (as of Oct. 27) reported 10,702 confirmed cases — over 2,100 new cases since the Oct. 16 update — and 36 deaths in 19 African countries this year. Mauritius confirmed its first mpox case (clade information is not yet available) on Oct. 26. Africa CDC’s Oct. 24 press briefing highlighted that children under 15 account for 38% of confirmed cases as well as a troubling rise of concurrent measles cases in the same age group in the the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). WHO encouragingly shared that four member states — Cameroon, Gabon, Guinea, and South Africa — have not reported confirmed cases in the past six weeks; the countries are regarded to now be in the outbreak’s control phase. The U.K. has now reported its first case of mpox (clade 1b) in a patient that had recently been on holiday in at least one of the affected countries in Africa and began to have symptoms after returning home. If you haven’t yet, 💥 read and bookmark PAN’s Mpox Insights & Actions: Making Sense of Mpox Trackers (updated regularly), our one-stop-shop for mpox tracking analysis and policy recommendations.
- Forward steps. The DRC — the outbreak’s epicenter — kicked off its second mpox vaccination stage, going beyond its first phase health worker target to reach people with high exposure risks. The WHO listed two additional mpox diagnostics under its Emergency Use Listing — one real-time PCR test capable of detecting clade 2 and another real-time PCR test capable of testing both clades 1 and 2. Bavarian Nordic’s clinical study to expand its mpox vaccine use to children began Oct. 29, an encouraging step as children are highly vulnerable and face critically limited access to vaccines. The WHO and partners also launched the Global Health Emergency Corps in its inaugural activation to support the outbreak response. Forward steps are also being made in our collective understanding of the mpox virus with Nature’s global genomic surveillance paper release, which sheds light on the virus’ evolution and circulation. 💥 Still, more needs to be done on all fronts — read and share our latest priority recommendation based on analysis of current mpox trackers.
Marburg — cautious optimism? Rwanda’s Marburg outbreak appears to have slowed with only three more cases confirmed and no new deaths in the past week, bringing totals to 66 cases and 15 deaths as of Oct. 30. Rwanda’s Ministry of Health confirmed that one of the cases was in a health care worker (HCW) who had been treating cases and was vaccinated an unspecified number of days before testing positive. Worryingly, the second case was found to have no HCW contacts, suggesting community transmission. Details of the third case are not yet known. Meanwhile, initial genomic findings on the outbreak’s source point to fruit bats, underscoring the need for One Health approaches.
H5N1 — Fowl road ahead.
Where is health at COP?
- Making health stick. Baku’s COP29 (Nov. 11-24) will once again feature a Health Day on Nov. 18, after the first Health Day last year. How will this Health Day and COP push further to ensure health is meaningfully integrated into negotiations? WHO’s objectives address the topline: (1) ensure that “everybody understands that the climate crisis is a health crisis,” and (2) “convince all the negotiators, participants, and member states that whatever they do to mitigate the process of climate change will have enormous potential health benefits.” Health Day will kick off with the high-level meeting on the Baku Initiative on Human Development for Climate Resilience followed by two other high-level meetings — One Health (Nov. 19) and resilient cities (Nov. 20).
- What about COP16? In Colombia, negotiators from nearly 200 countries are deadlocked in week two of COP16 UN Biodiversity Summit negotiations. Key points of contention include where the US$700 billion needed for biodiversity will come from and how funds will be distributed, how to fairly share profits derived from nature’s genetic codes, and bridging the gap between human health and biodiversity in national strategies. Action cannot come soon enough as humans’ encroachment and exploitative actions are leading to increased health and pandemic risks.
- Calling for action! We continue to call for commitments to build climate- and pandemic-resilient, end-to-end health systems reflecting the most vulnerables’ needs while unlocking climate and health funding to deliver these future-facing systems. We call on the broader health and development sector to also fight for the end of fossil fuel consumption and other core climate policies. 💥 The international climate and health community, informed by Global Climate and Health Alliance-hosted consultations, developed nine recommendations for the inclusion of health in COP negotiations and discussions. Civil society organizations are invited to sign on to support the recommendations on page 1 before 12pm AZT (Baku time) / 9am CET on Nov. 9.
New EU mindset to preparedness. In response to a request from EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, former President of Finland Sauli Niinistö released a special EU report on Strengthening Europe’s Civilian and Military Preparedness and Readiness. President Niinistö writes, “We must be better prepared, not only to survive, but also to thrive in this new reality. This calls for an overhaul of the way we Europeans see the Union’s role in keeping us all secure.” The report goes on to highlight increasing biosecurity risks through “accelerating biotechnological innovation facilitating the development of synthetic pathogens” — an area of work PAN is diving into with partners IBBIS, Pour Demain, and more.
¡Mil gracias, España! In a win, Spain announced it will give up to €400 million over the next five years to IDA — the largest source of grants and low-cost loans for the world’s 75 poorest countries. Spain’s renewed commitment is a 37% increase compared to previous years. 💥 Read and use our call to action to African Ministers and IDA shareholders.
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The Global Tuberculosis (TB) Report 2024 revealed that 8.2 million people were diagnosed with TB for the first time in 2023 — surpassing records and putting TB back at the top as the deadliest disease.
Quickstart, supported by Duke University, Americares, the Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI), and COVID Collaborative, launched the first report of their new report series on Tracking and Analyzing Medical Countermeasures for Emerging Health Challenges: Mpox.
Six international conservation groups including The Nature Conservancy and The Pew Charitable Trusts launched a new coalition to develop debt-for-nature swap practice standards.
Read the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences and the Royal Society of Canada’s Expert Panel on Canada’s Role in Global Health’s new report, Protecting our Collective Future: Renewing Canada’s Role in Global Health.
What we are reading and listening to:
- Charles Ebikeme writes in Nature how the mpox response has learned and benefitted from previous health emergencies, especially the HIV/AIDS crisis.
- Maduabuchi MacDonald details in Think Global Health how Nigerian youth health organizations are stepping up to promote and mpox awareness and strategies.
- The People's Medicine Alliance’s Mohga Kamal-Yanni, Global Health Centre’s Suerie Moon, Johns Hopkins’ Alexandra Phelan, and others argue for a more robust WHO to ensure equitable pandemic and health tool access.
- Rachel Glennerster, Siddhartha Haria, Leah Rosenzweig, and Lawrence Summers examined Five Steps MDBs Can Take Now to Unlock Pandemic Financing at a Center for Global Development (CGD) event.
- Madhukar Pai, Shashika Bandara, and Catherine Kyobutungi lay out the needed steps to shift power imbalances in global health to foster the Global South’s leadership and the Global North’s allyship.
- Pete Baker, Javier Guzman, Kalipso Chalkidou, and Richard Sullivan respond to The Lancet Commission on Investing in Health’s third report and offer an alternative prioritization approach to improve financing and outcomes in a CGD piece.
- The World Bank’s Axel van Trotsenburg sat down with Devex to shed light on World Bank reform.
- The UN’s latest Emissions Gap Report, No More Hot Air… Please!, urges “dramatically stronger ambition and action in the next round of Nationally Determined Contributions, or the Paris Agreement’s 1.5°C goal will be gone within a few years.”
- Sunny Jha and Robert Carter III examine Global Health Security Lessons from the U.S. Biodefense Response in Think Global Health.
- ICYMI! Add these CSIS The Common Health episodes to your playlist:
Ahead of International Universal Health Coverage (UHC) Day on Dec. 12, join the Civil Society Engagement Mechanism for UHC2030’s letter campaign and call on your decision makers and government officials to accelerate UHC action.
The University of Oxford is recruiting up to five Pandemic Sciences Research Fellows. Apply by Dec. 6.
Have something to share with the Network? We accept communications, policy, and advocacy opportunities on a rolling basis.
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CEPI is hosting their annual CSO dialogue with CEO Dr. Richard Hatchett on Nov. 5.
Register for CGD’s Reforming Development Assistance For Health: Is a True Partnership Possible? virtual event on Nov. 5.
Join WHO’s One Health webinars:
The World Health Organization Regional Office for Africa (WHO AFRO) and the Society for AIDS in Africa (SAA) will host the webinar, Mpox: Community Responses and Lessons Learned on Nov. 13.
Global Citizen NOW is going to Rio on Nov. 17. Register your interest for the event ahead of the G20 Summit.
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