World Health Summit 2020 Advancing Science, Innovation And Policy

Jhabindra Bhandari

 

The World Health Summit is one of the important strategic forums for global health. This year, the summit recently took place as a fully digital conference in Berlin, Germany. This global forum offered a unique opportunity to bring together international experts from academia, public health, politics, private sector, civil society and policy makers to discuss a range of urgent global health issues and identify practical solutions for a healthier future.
More importantly, the summit broadly aimed at advancing science, innovation and evidence-informed policies for global health and development. Major focus has now been on a range of key interdisciplinary and cross-sectoral issues around Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Ensuring good health and well-being for all people is inherently linked with a new approach of health in all policies. This approach has particularly built a new ground for partnerships across different sectors, creating synergies for strategic impacts.

Poverty
In most developing countries, poverty is a major contributor to poor health, leading to unhealthy living and working environments, poor nutrition and illiteracy. These increase vulnerability to diseases and limit access to basic health and social services and affordable medicines. Moreover, the social and economic burden of non-communicable diseases on the poor is rapidly growing. These diseases are now the single greatest cause of preventable illness, disability and mortality worldwide.
In order to accelerate progress on health related SDG targets, a coordinated action across social, structural, economic, commercial and environmental determinants of health is urgently required. This includes changing laws, policies, norms and governance mechanisms that increase health risks and limit access to services, strengthening primary health care, and adopting measures to address inequalities and exclusion of the most marginalised and vulnerable populations.
On the other hand, Universal Health Coverage (UHC) is an important political commitment that aims for all people to have access to the health services they need, when and where they need them, without financial hardship. This includes the full range of essential health services, from health promotion to prevention, treatment, rehabilitation, and palliative care. In reality, many people still do not receive the health services they need. Majority of them are pushed into extreme poverty because of out-of-pocket spending on health.
In the recent years, climate change and environmental degradation are growing concerns for human health. In particular, low-income countries are facing strong challenges of adapting to climate change and related health hazards. Despite significant health gains over the decades, there is increasing evidence that the planet’s capacity to sustain the growing human population is declining. Rapid population growth, biodiversity loss, freshwater depletion and soil pollution have profound impacts on human health and environment.
Health is a fundamental human right. Therefore, improving health for everyone is a common goal of national governments, development partners, civil society and private sectors. At the moment, the COVID-19 pandemic has put global public health into the spotlight worldwide and has highlighted the importance of international cooperation, partnership, and domestic resource mobilisation for effective and sustained response
However, in such difficult times of the pandemic, many developing countries are seriously considering practical measures to respond to pandemic and other health emergencies in a more comprehensive way. These responses must be delivered in an integrated manner, harnessing synergies across sectors, addressing overlapping vulnerabilities and delivering shared gains, and using available resources efficiently and effectively.
The capacity of national governments to prevent, detect and control outbreaks must be further enhanced to ensure an effective and sustained health sector response to the pandemic. In this context, greater advocacy on domestic financing for preparedness and response is needed to save lives. By expanding people’s choices and capabilities to lead healthy and productive lives, investments in health and other areas of development are mutually reinforcing.
The public health security is another issue that needs to be realistically addressed to build a safer future for humanity. Over the years, there has been substantial progress towards improving access to essential medicines and treatments for fighting HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis. The Global Fund's support to end these epidemics has been effective across the developing countries. However, in most of the developing countries, access to essential medicines remains inadequate. Recent progress shows that access to essential medicines can be improved through stronger partnerships between governments, pharmaceutical companies, civil society and development partners. There are critical needs of global efforts to step up vaccine research and development for neglected tropical diseases.

Digital innovation
More significantly, technology and innovation is an integral part of healthcare, in both developing and developed countries. The advancement of technological innovations has been instrumental in reducing inefficiencies in healthcare delivery, while at the same time streamlining access, reducing costs and improving quality of health care. Despite the considerable progress, many countries still require institutional support for the development and consolidation of national digital health strategies and the implementation of their action plans. There are still critical needs of strengthening integrated health information systems to promote evidence-based planning and decision making in provision of health care services at all levels.
Undoubtedly, digital technologies are gradually revolutionising health care and provide unprecedented opportunities to improve health and well-being worldwide, transform economies, and stimulate growth. These tools will be helpful to solve health system problems and create an equitable global health future by advancing science, innovation and pro-poor health policies.

(Bhandari is senior doctoral research fellow in global health systems)