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G20HDP congratulates our Global Ambassador Dr Hayat Sindi to have been nominated by the “Arab Power List 2021” as one of the most influential individuals shaping the Middle East.

Arab Power List 2021

G20HDP Welcomes Today’s Joint G20 Finance-Health Ministers Declaration

A letter by our Chairman Alan Donnelly, Convenor of The G20 Health and Development Partnership, to G20 Health and Finance Ministers and G20 Leader’s following the outcomes of the 3rd joint Ministerial Meeting in Rome on 29th October today and ahead of the G20 Leader’s summit this weekend.

 

Your Excellencies,

On behalf of the G20 Health and Development Partnership I want to express our thanks for the leadership of Italy this year, and in ensuring a concrete outcome from the Joint Finance and Health Ministers meeting today.

The most important strategic decision is the creation of the new G20 Joint Finance-Health Task Force. The G20 HDP proposed this initiative three years ago, as we believed, even prior to the COVID-19 pandemic that there was a direct link between the performance of the economy and the investment in healthcare systems including pandemic preparedness.

The Task Force must not become another talking shop. It must have the same impact on Health that the Financial Stability Board has had on financial resilience.

We welcome the deepening commitment to the WHO, which of course requires sustainable funding at a higher level.

The new architecture must establish, beyond the funding of the ACT-A next year, a new funding mechanism funded and replenished by Governments which can invest and intervene when the Task Force is alerted to a new global health challenge.

The Task Force must also promote a robust multilateral surveillance procedure that both monitors the emerging risks and the scale of the annual national and regional health investments.

The G20 Health and Development Partnership welcomes the proposal from Rt Hon. Gordon Brown at todays Ministerial meeting for countries holding stockpiles of vaccines, beyond their own immediate requirements, to make these available urgently to COVAX for distribution to the most vulnerable countries.

Today’s outcomes from the Joint G20 Finance and Health Ministers meeting is a major step in recognising the importance of keeping our citizens healthy, which helps to keep our economies strong we urge the Heads of Government to require the immediate implementation of today’s declaration and that the Italian and Indonesian Governments will ensure the commitment to establish the Task Force before the end of 2021.

Yours sincerely,

Alan Donnelly

 

The full G20 Joint Health and Finance Ministers Declaration can be found here: https://www.g20.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/G20-Joint-Finance-and-Health-Ministers-Communique-29-October-2021.pdf

Read The Declaration Here

Africa, COVID-19 and the increasing risk of substandard and falsified medical products

Click here to read about the increasing risk of substandard and falsified medical products in Africa.

The G20 Health and Development Partnership – Recommendations for the Global Health Summit, the World Health Assembly 2021, the G20 and the G7

Click here to read the G20 Health and Development Partnership’s recommendations for the Global Health Summit.

Letter to G20 Heads of Government and Sherpas

Alan Donnelly, Convenor of the G20 HDP and Chairman of SSD, writes an open letter to G20 Heads of Government and Sherpas, urging funding for treatment, diagnostics and vaccines under the ACT-Accelerator programme.

Read the open letter

Recommendations to G20 Health and Finance Ministers

Pandemic Preparedness – The Urgent Transition From Emergency Relief To Long-Term Sustainable Sourcing 

Ahead of the 2nd G20 Joint Meeting of G20 Finance and Health Ministers Meeting on 17th September, The G20 Health and Development Partnership have submitted a 6 recommendations urging Ministers and Heads of State and Government for building a new resilient global health system that will significantly increase the world’s ability to react to future health threats that no longer treats resourcing as emergency relief.

Read the call to action

World Patient Safety Day: special message from Dr Tedros, Director-General, WHO

Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the World Health Organization, delivered a video message to a conference hosted by Sovereign Sustainability and Development (secretariat of the G20 Health and Development Partnership), RLDatix and the Saudi Patient Safety Center on 10 September 2020. The conference was hosted to address issues of both patient and health worker safety ahead of World Patient Safety Day on 17 September 2020.

Why the COVID-19 crisis has strengthened the case for Universal Health Coverage and for Achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals

(London, 6th August 2020)

The prolonged COVID-19 pandemic has brought personal and societal havoc in its wake as families around the world suffer the deaths of loved-ones, economies sink into recession and healthcare systems struggle to remain resilient, not only in lower-income countries but also sophisticated health systems in high-income nations have been stretched to their limits and beyond.

At the same time, however, the COVID-19 crisis has, if anything, strengthened the case for Universal Health Coverage (UHC) and for making the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), notably SDG3 on health, a reality by the end of this decade.

Equally, the pandemic has highlighted the key role of the corporate sector and, above all, of public-private partnerships in delivering safe, effective, accessible and affordable treatments, vaccines and diagnostics for all. If we are to make substantial progress on our common pledge to “leave no one behind” and provide UHC, we need to reimagine these public private partnerships and work towards making health care systems more resilient around the globe.

That’s why I am delighted to have been appointed a global ambassador for the G20 Health and Development Partnership, working under the same tent with others from across the global health community to remove fences and ensure that innovation reaches patients and that the private sector steps up its efforts to help achieve UHC.

That must mean, most of all, rethinking public spending and investing at least an extra 1% of GDP in healthcare for all. Despite many countries making incremental progress on health spending, access remains a multifaceted challenge and can only be ensured by addressing various factors, including greater disease awareness, increased availability of medical products through local manufacturing, a well-trained health workforce, and sufficient funding and reimbursement schemes to prevent patients from suffering financial hardship.

Here is where the private sector, working in tandem with governments, and civil society (I know this at first hand as the honorary COO of a grassroot level NGO working to improve health in villages around Delhi) and others, can help. Private sector including corporates can help strengthen health care capacity. It can help streamline and improve local procurement systems, can aid local manufacturing of medicines by sharing expertise and knowhow as it has shown on an unprecedented scale in the pandemic.

The private sector, governments, and international organisations share the same goal which is also my personal priority: bringing innovation to those most in need. Making a real difference.

Guest Comment by: Dr Monika Puri – Global Ambassador for the G20 Health & Development Partnership

 

Test to Exit COVID-19: Engaging Women Political Leaders as Champions for Testing

(London, 17th June 2020)

Register online today

COVID-19 has set the scene for women leaders around the world to understand the importance of testing to contain the health, humanitarian, and economic fallout of the pandemic. Testing has enabled countries to re-open their economies, education systems, and public life.

Currently 90% of the impact of COVID-19 is felt in G20 societies and economies. It is evident that the current crisis will impact national economies for years to come. As the current global economic burden of $90 billion exceeds the costs posed to the global economy during the financial crisis in 2008, the political choices made by G20 and all world leaders in the coming weeks, in response to the COVID-19 are of historic proportions. According to the Global Preparedness Monitoring Board – an independent WHO body – the real number of infected people is estimated to be 20 times higher than outlined in statistics.

Yet, we are facing a global crisis on testing as there are not enough tests available to test populations in order to treat them against COVID-19. New, simple, affordable and high-performing tests are still needed.

The G20 Health and Development Partnership, Women Political Leaders and FIND bring together leading women in science, global health and politics as Champions for Testing.  They highlight their experiences of successful testing in their communities and countries and why testing is the first line of defence against COVID-19 until a vaccine and a treatment become available.

Female political leaders from around the world have led by example, taking key decisions on a daily basis on how best to handle testing, which is today’s first line of defence against COVID-19.  By taking informed decisions accounting for both health and economic considerations, these leaders have enabled their countries to re-open their economies, education systems and public life. Not to forget are female frontline workers and community practitioners who put their lives at risk to save our lives.
The G20 Health and Development Partnership, Women Political Leaders (WPL), and FIND, convenor of the global testing community, have joined forces to bring together women scientific, global health, and political leaders to help inform key decisions around testing to exit COVID-19.

Register online today

CALL TO ACTION BY G20HDP MEMBERS AHEAD OF TODAY’s G20 LEADER’s SUMMIT TO ADDRESS THE COVID-19 CRISIS

(London, 26th March 2020)

(READ THE FULL PAPER HERE)

G20 leaders together with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Health Organisation (WHO), and the World Bank (WB) and the United Nations (UN) in collaboration with the private sector and other stakeholders must now take up the challenge and devise a new framework for global health security. Pandemic risk is increasing, and the global response cannot be treated as ‘disaster relief’, as we are witnessing today. Finance ministers and central bank governors must redefine health spending on R&D and system strengthening for this new global framework as legitimate public investment.

There are significant resources in pension and sovereign wealth funds which can be invested in new innovative and blended finance initiatives. There are currently USD 200 Trillion existing in capital markets globally. 1% of global capital markets can be used to close the entire SDG Gap. Less than 50% of that would close the gap in health-related SDGs.4

Private investors are keen to invest in social impact financial instruments, provided the financial regulators set out clearly the regulatory and fiscal regime. As with all private investments, the investors want to understand how a new financial instrument is regulated, whether there are tax benefits, and how return on investment is determined. The IMF, together with central bank governors and finance ministers, should urgently address these issues and encourage private and institutional investors to participate in scaled up blended and innovative finance initiatives to help meet the funding requirements of a new health security framework.

Organisations like Unitaid, Gavi, GHIT and R&D focused pharmaceutical companies have significant experience in blended financing for health and could be called upon to demonstrate practical examples of both public private financing and partnerships that have over recent years produced promising results.

Product Development Partnerships (PDPs), such as MMV, the TB Alliance and PATH often working with private sector partners understand how to bring together public, private and philanthropic finance to advance R&D to develop and scale lifesaving health products. Their knowledge has led to significant breakthroughs in scientific research.

In 2008, the world faced a potential systemic collapse of the banking and financial system. The immediate reaction of leaders at that time saw them come together, particularly within the G20. Finance ministers implemented urgent new regulation and central bank reserves were deployed to save the banking system.

The Financial Stability Board of G20 finance ministers and central bank governors was created with agreed new powers to address resilience in the financial systems. The IMF Article IV consultation and surveillance procedure was strengthened regarding resilience of national financial systems. As a result of the COVID-19 crisis, we must have a response of equal gravity and urgency to that in 2008.

The IMF must incorporate into its Article IV multilateral surveillance procedure an assessment of the resilience of national and regional health systems. This should be done in cooperation with the WHO. In addition to the WHO’s GPMB, the financial stability board should expand its mandate to include health system resilience and oversee the establishment of a multi-billion dollar fund that represents an “Advance Impact Commitment” which funds end to end solutions in innovation and product development in healthcare and strengthening weak health systems.

Today, despite warnings, the evidence and outbreaks, among others, of Ebola, SARS and MERS, we have not put in place adequate mechanisms needed to prepare, pre-empt, and hopefully, prevent a new pandemic. Hence, we need much greater investment and increased incentives for R&D into the pathogens that pose the greatest threat to our health.

Rapid diagnostics are needed to identify the pathogens and new vaccines to prevent worldwide infection from those pathogens. There is also need for greater investment and incentives for seeing how existing treatments can be used to combat new pathogens.

In 2008 and 2009 heads of government, finance ministers and central bank governors used all of the levers of government together with central bank reserves to stabilise the crisis and build a framework to prevent a future systemic crisis. We believe the recommendations outlined below will help to create a framework for the future which will protect the health of citizens and support economic growth.

Given the need to be proactive on future outbreaks, we recommend:

  1. A strengthened IMF Article IV consultation in cooperation with the WHO, to regularly evaluate national health systems resilience;
  2. The expansion of the G20 Financial Stability Board to include within its mandate health system resilience and the promotion of public/private investment in innovation and product development;
  3. An annual meeting of G20 finance & health ministers as part of the official G20 Presidency agenda;
  4. That the G20, IMF, EU, WB and the Development Banks including the IsDB and the WHO join efforts and actions and establish with urgency a multi-billion dollar financing instrument for the development of affordable vaccine, medicines and diagnostics, providing incremental funding for global clinical research as well as regulatory alignment and market preparation. This fund can also support push/pull incentives for optimized pricing through advanced market commitments/results- based delivery funding. This instrument should be focused on addressing global health threats where commercial incentive is lacking;
  5. That the G20 and the IMF examine steps necessary to encourage significant expansion of innovative financing initiatives and promote the scaling up of innovative and blended finance for health;
  6. The review of the regulatory regime for the approval of innovative medicines and vaccines to ensure earlier patient access;
  7. That the G20 and the IMF collaborate with the WHO and funders above to prioritize essential digital and data investments to strengthen the resilience of health systems, the quality and availability of early warning and disease surveillance information, and ensure an adequate supply of health workers, vaccines and other treatments as they become available;
  8. That the World Bank’s pandemic bond issue, created in 2017, which was designed to help fund the response to any widespread outbreak of a number of diseases, including coronavirus, should be triggered and potentially unlocked on April 9th. The G20HDP urges this funding to be channelled into the R&D response for COVID-19.

The global impact of unsafe care

Helen Hughes, RLDatix

Ensuring the safety of patients should be at the core of healthcare, reflected by one of the earliest maxims learned by professionals, ‘first, do no harm’. However, the stark reality is that the scale of avoidable harm caused by unsafe care worldwide is enormous. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that it is one of the 10 leading causes of death and disability worldwide.

In high income countries as many as 1 in 10 patients are harmed while receiving hospital care. The human cost of unsafe care is even more critical in low- and middle-income counties, with poor quality care accounting for 10-15% of total deaths, some 2.6 million deaths annually.

Over 80% of these deaths are avoidable.

Every avoidable death is an unnecessary tragedy for patients, families and for healthcare professionals. Beyond the cost in human lives, there are other consequences of preventable errors: loss of trust in the health care system by patients; diminished satisfaction by both patients and health professionals; the physical and psychological discomfort of patients who experience a long hospital stay or disability as a result of errors; loss of morale and frustration of health professionals at not being able to provide the best care possible. Society bears the wider cost of errors as well, in terms of lost worker productivity, reduced school attendance by children, and lower levels of population health status.

Coupled with this immense loss of life and harm, there is a staggering financial cost of unsafe care. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) estimate that unsafe care accounts for 15% of total hospital activity and expenditure in OECD countries. The global cost is trillions of dollars each year.

The financial penalty that societies endure makes the economic imperative for improving patient safety indisputable.

The global healthcare community has faced the stark reality of the scale of unsafe care since the US Institute of Medicine publication of ‘To Err is Human’ in 1999. Since then, there have been many international and national initiatives to better understand the complexity of causes of unsafe care and the action needed to reduce harm. It is now universally agreed that healthcare needs to transform itself to a safe system with action by everyone including regulators, funders, health providers, professional bodies, industry, educators and policy makers. The cost of making improvements to patient safety is a drop in the ocean compared to the ongoing huge economic burden that unsafe care imposes.

The WHO works with Member States and partners to create patient safety strategies and policies to develop and implement safer and more sustainable health-care systems. Because of the implications on the sustainability of healthcare systems and the global economy, patient safety is being introduced as a priority on the agenda of this year’s G20 summit.

There are clear imperatives for society to take immediate action. We must eradicate harm from unsafe care. We must ensure that resources are spent on delivering safe care and not wasted on responding to this harm.

For more than 30 years RLDatix has been the leading international provider of intelligent patient safety solutions and at the forefront of patient safety technology. We welcome the transformational focus on patient safety that the G20 summit will bring and commit to contributing our thought leadership and innovation as we scale up the ambition and pace of harm reduction.

The Real Consequences of Fake Medicines

David Richmond, Chief Executive, Brazzaville Foundation

This month, African leaders will pledge to introduce tough criminal legislation to combat the proliferation of substandard and fake medical products – a deadly business that disproportionately affects the poorest and most vulnerable. They need and deserve international support.

Niger’s government is sounding the alarm about bogus meningitis vaccines – and it is not the first time. Five years ago, hundreds of Nigerien people died after receiving fake vaccines. The problem, of course, is not vaccines. It is the widespread distribution of substandard and falsified medical products. And it is a problem that disproportionately affects Africa.

The global market for medicines that are substandard (failing to meet quality specifications) or falsified (with the composition, identity, or source deliberately misrepresented) is estimated to be worth up to $200 billion, or 10-15% of the total pharmaceutical market. But it could be much bigger: according to the World Health Organization, which relies largely on voluntary reporting by health-care professionals, we may know about “just a small fraction” of all cases. What we do know is that the problem is particularly acute in Africa. In 2013-2017, 42% of substandard and falsified medicines found were on the continent. This is undermining Africa’s hard-won progress on health, not least by eroding trust in nascent health-care systems. Needless to say, the use of substandard or falsified medicines – which range from ineffective to poisonous – can have devastating consequences, with the poorest and most vulnerable being hit the hardest. After all, it is those with limited funds and poor access to medical professionals and quality health care who are most likely to buy discounted medicines on the streets, where there is no guarantee that they are real, let alone of high quality. Ultimately, this can result in much higher costs for victims, who must pay more to treat the original illness once it has progressed further, as well as for any side effects from the fake medication, if they survive at all. A 2015 study estimated that, in Sub-Saharan Africa, 122,000 children under the age of five had died in just one year as a result of substandard or falsified antimalarial medications. Moreover, since people don’t know what they are taking, let alone the proper dose, falsified and substandard medicines contribute to rising antimicrobial resistance – a trend that doesn’t discriminate between rich and poor. Yet fake-medicine traffickers have little incentive to stop. It is estimated that every $1,000 traffickers “invest” in counterfeit medicines can yield as much as $450,000 in profit. That margin is 10-25 times larger than that enjoyed by sellers of illicit narcotics. And those massive rewards are not counterbalanced by significant risk. Even when caught, fake-medicine traffickers often avoid prison time. They merely pay a fine and get back to business.

David Richmond is Chief Executive of the Brazzaville Foundation, an independent London-based charity that focuses on African issues. This op-ed originally appeared on Project-Syndicate.org on 15 January 2020.

A note on the G20 Health and Development Partnership: the threat posed by substandard and falsified medicines is expanding beyond Africa and is also a concern for G20 nations. Under this year’s G20 Presidency, led by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, it is of utmost importance that G20 leaders focus on combatting the scale of this challenge, as it not only promotes the financing of terrorism, but is also a huge burden on national economies. Moreover, there is an opportunity under this year’s G20 health agenda and its focus on patient safety, to address the dangers posed by substandard and falsified medicines on patients.

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Africa, COVID-19 and the increasing risk of substandard and falsified medical products

Click here to read about the increasing risk of substandard and falsified medical products in Africa.

The G20 Health and Development Partnership – Recommendations for the Global Health Summit, the World Health Assembly 2021, the G20 and the G7

Click here to read the G20 Health and Development Partnership’s recommendations for the Global Health Summit.

Letter to G20 Heads of Government and Sherpas

Alan Donnelly, Convenor of the G20 HDP and Chairman of SSD, writes an open letter to G20 Heads of Government and Sherpas, urging funding for treatment, diagnostics and vaccines under the ACT-Accelerator programme.

Read the open letter

Recommendations to G20 Health and Finance Ministers

Pandemic Preparedness – The Urgent Transition From Emergency Relief To Long-Term Sustainable Sourcing 

Ahead of the 2nd G20 Joint Meeting of G20 Finance and Health Ministers Meeting on 17th September, The G20 Health and Development Partnership have submitted a 6 recommendations urging Ministers and Heads of State and Government for building a new resilient global health system that will significantly increase the world’s ability to react to future health threats that no longer treats resourcing as emergency relief.

Read the call to action

World Patient Safety Day: special message from Dr Tedros, Director-General, WHO

Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the World Health Organization, delivered a video message to a conference hosted by Sovereign Sustainability and Development (secretariat of the G20 Health and Development Partnership), RLDatix and the Saudi Patient Safety Center on 10 September 2020. The conference was hosted to address issues of both patient and health worker safety ahead of World Patient Safety Day on 17 September 2020.

Why the COVID-19 crisis has strengthened the case for Universal Health Coverage and for Achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals

(London, 6th August 2020)

The prolonged COVID-19 pandemic has brought personal and societal havoc in its wake as families around the world suffer the deaths of loved-ones, economies sink into recession and healthcare systems struggle to remain resilient, not only in lower-income countries but also sophisticated health systems in high-income nations have been stretched to their limits and beyond.

At the same time, however, the COVID-19 crisis has, if anything, strengthened the case for Universal Health Coverage (UHC) and for making the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), notably SDG3 on health, a reality by the end of this decade.

Equally, the pandemic has highlighted the key role of the corporate sector and, above all, of public-private partnerships in delivering safe, effective, accessible and affordable treatments, vaccines and diagnostics for all. If we are to make substantial progress on our common pledge to “leave no one behind” and provide UHC, we need to reimagine these public private partnerships and work towards making health care systems more resilient around the globe.

That’s why I am delighted to have been appointed a global ambassador for the G20 Health and Development Partnership, working under the same tent with others from across the global health community to remove fences and ensure that innovation reaches patients and that the private sector steps up its efforts to help achieve UHC.

That must mean, most of all, rethinking public spending and investing at least an extra 1% of GDP in healthcare for all. Despite many countries making incremental progress on health spending, access remains a multifaceted challenge and can only be ensured by addressing various factors, including greater disease awareness, increased availability of medical products through local manufacturing, a well-trained health workforce, and sufficient funding and reimbursement schemes to prevent patients from suffering financial hardship.

Here is where the private sector, working in tandem with governments, and civil society (I know this at first hand as the honorary COO of a grassroot level NGO working to improve health in villages around Delhi) and others, can help. Private sector including corporates can help strengthen health care capacity. It can help streamline and improve local procurement systems, can aid local manufacturing of medicines by sharing expertise and knowhow as it has shown on an unprecedented scale in the pandemic.

The private sector, governments, and international organisations share the same goal which is also my personal priority: bringing innovation to those most in need. Making a real difference.

Guest Comment by: Dr Monika Puri – Global Ambassador for the G20 Health & Development Partnership

 

Test to Exit COVID-19: Engaging Women Political Leaders as Champions for Testing

(London, 17th June 2020)

Register online today

COVID-19 has set the scene for women leaders around the world to understand the importance of testing to contain the health, humanitarian, and economic fallout of the pandemic. Testing has enabled countries to re-open their economies, education systems, and public life.

Currently 90% of the impact of COVID-19 is felt in G20 societies and economies. It is evident that the current crisis will impact national economies for years to come. As the current global economic burden of $90 billion exceeds the costs posed to the global economy during the financial crisis in 2008, the political choices made by G20 and all world leaders in the coming weeks, in response to the COVID-19 are of historic proportions. According to the Global Preparedness Monitoring Board – an independent WHO body – the real number of infected people is estimated to be 20 times higher than outlined in statistics.

Yet, we are facing a global crisis on testing as there are not enough tests available to test populations in order to treat them against COVID-19. New, simple, affordable and high-performing tests are still needed.

The G20 Health and Development Partnership, Women Political Leaders and FIND bring together leading women in science, global health and politics as Champions for Testing.  They highlight their experiences of successful testing in their communities and countries and why testing is the first line of defence against COVID-19 until a vaccine and a treatment become available.

Female political leaders from around the world have led by example, taking key decisions on a daily basis on how best to handle testing, which is today’s first line of defence against COVID-19.  By taking informed decisions accounting for both health and economic considerations, these leaders have enabled their countries to re-open their economies, education systems and public life. Not to forget are female frontline workers and community practitioners who put their lives at risk to save our lives.
The G20 Health and Development Partnership, Women Political Leaders (WPL), and FIND, convenor of the global testing community, have joined forces to bring together women scientific, global health, and political leaders to help inform key decisions around testing to exit COVID-19.

Register online today

CALL TO ACTION BY G20HDP MEMBERS AHEAD OF TODAY’s G20 LEADER’s SUMMIT TO ADDRESS THE COVID-19 CRISIS

(London, 26th March 2020)

(READ THE FULL PAPER HERE)

G20 leaders together with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Health Organisation (WHO), and the World Bank (WB) and the United Nations (UN) in collaboration with the private sector and other stakeholders must now take up the challenge and devise a new framework for global health security. Pandemic risk is increasing, and the global response cannot be treated as ‘disaster relief’, as we are witnessing today. Finance ministers and central bank governors must redefine health spending on R&D and system strengthening for this new global framework as legitimate public investment.

There are significant resources in pension and sovereign wealth funds which can be invested in new innovative and blended finance initiatives. There are currently USD 200 Trillion existing in capital markets globally. 1% of global capital markets can be used to close the entire SDG Gap. Less than 50% of that would close the gap in health-related SDGs.4

Private investors are keen to invest in social impact financial instruments, provided the financial regulators set out clearly the regulatory and fiscal regime. As with all private investments, the investors want to understand how a new financial instrument is regulated, whether there are tax benefits, and how return on investment is determined. The IMF, together with central bank governors and finance ministers, should urgently address these issues and encourage private and institutional investors to participate in scaled up blended and innovative finance initiatives to help meet the funding requirements of a new health security framework.

Organisations like Unitaid, Gavi, GHIT and R&D focused pharmaceutical companies have significant experience in blended financing for health and could be called upon to demonstrate practical examples of both public private financing and partnerships that have over recent years produced promising results.

Product Development Partnerships (PDPs), such as MMV, the TB Alliance and PATH often working with private sector partners understand how to bring together public, private and philanthropic finance to advance R&D to develop and scale lifesaving health products. Their knowledge has led to significant breakthroughs in scientific research.

In 2008, the world faced a potential systemic collapse of the banking and financial system. The immediate reaction of leaders at that time saw them come together, particularly within the G20. Finance ministers implemented urgent new regulation and central bank reserves were deployed to save the banking system.

The Financial Stability Board of G20 finance ministers and central bank governors was created with agreed new powers to address resilience in the financial systems. The IMF Article IV consultation and surveillance procedure was strengthened regarding resilience of national financial systems. As a result of the COVID-19 crisis, we must have a response of equal gravity and urgency to that in 2008.

The IMF must incorporate into its Article IV multilateral surveillance procedure an assessment of the resilience of national and regional health systems. This should be done in cooperation with the WHO. In addition to the WHO’s GPMB, the financial stability board should expand its mandate to include health system resilience and oversee the establishment of a multi-billion dollar fund that represents an “Advance Impact Commitment” which funds end to end solutions in innovation and product development in healthcare and strengthening weak health systems.

Today, despite warnings, the evidence and outbreaks, among others, of Ebola, SARS and MERS, we have not put in place adequate mechanisms needed to prepare, pre-empt, and hopefully, prevent a new pandemic. Hence, we need much greater investment and increased incentives for R&D into the pathogens that pose the greatest threat to our health.

Rapid diagnostics are needed to identify the pathogens and new vaccines to prevent worldwide infection from those pathogens. There is also need for greater investment and incentives for seeing how existing treatments can be used to combat new pathogens.

In 2008 and 2009 heads of government, finance ministers and central bank governors used all of the levers of government together with central bank reserves to stabilise the crisis and build a framework to prevent a future systemic crisis. We believe the recommendations outlined below will help to create a framework for the future which will protect the health of citizens and support economic growth.

Given the need to be proactive on future outbreaks, we recommend:

  1. A strengthened IMF Article IV consultation in cooperation with the WHO, to regularly evaluate national health systems resilience;
  2. The expansion of the G20 Financial Stability Board to include within its mandate health system resilience and the promotion of public/private investment in innovation and product development;
  3. An annual meeting of G20 finance & health ministers as part of the official G20 Presidency agenda;
  4. That the G20, IMF, EU, WB and the Development Banks including the IsDB and the WHO join efforts and actions and establish with urgency a multi-billion dollar financing instrument for the development of affordable vaccine, medicines and diagnostics, providing incremental funding for global clinical research as well as regulatory alignment and market preparation. This fund can also support push/pull incentives for optimized pricing through advanced market commitments/results- based delivery funding. This instrument should be focused on addressing global health threats where commercial incentive is lacking;
  5. That the G20 and the IMF examine steps necessary to encourage significant expansion of innovative financing initiatives and promote the scaling up of innovative and blended finance for health;
  6. The review of the regulatory regime for the approval of innovative medicines and vaccines to ensure earlier patient access;
  7. That the G20 and the IMF collaborate with the WHO and funders above to prioritize essential digital and data investments to strengthen the resilience of health systems, the quality and availability of early warning and disease surveillance information, and ensure an adequate supply of health workers, vaccines and other treatments as they become available;
  8. That the World Bank’s pandemic bond issue, created in 2017, which was designed to help fund the response to any widespread outbreak of a number of diseases, including coronavirus, should be triggered and potentially unlocked on April 9th. The G20HDP urges this funding to be channelled into the R&D response for COVID-19.

The global impact of unsafe care

Helen Hughes, RLDatix

Ensuring the safety of patients should be at the core of healthcare, reflected by one of the earliest maxims learned by professionals, ‘first, do no harm’. However, the stark reality is that the scale of avoidable harm caused by unsafe care worldwide is enormous. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that it is one of the 10 leading causes of death and disability worldwide.

In high income countries as many as 1 in 10 patients are harmed while receiving hospital care. The human cost of unsafe care is even more critical in low- and middle-income counties, with poor quality care accounting for 10-15% of total deaths, some 2.6 million deaths annually.

Over 80% of these deaths are avoidable.

Every avoidable death is an unnecessary tragedy for patients, families and for healthcare professionals. Beyond the cost in human lives, there are other consequences of preventable errors: loss of trust in the health care system by patients; diminished satisfaction by both patients and health professionals; the physical and psychological discomfort of patients who experience a long hospital stay or disability as a result of errors; loss of morale and frustration of health professionals at not being able to provide the best care possible. Society bears the wider cost of errors as well, in terms of lost worker productivity, reduced school attendance by children, and lower levels of population health status.

Coupled with this immense loss of life and harm, there is a staggering financial cost of unsafe care. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) estimate that unsafe care accounts for 15% of total hospital activity and expenditure in OECD countries. The global cost is trillions of dollars each year.

The financial penalty that societies endure makes the economic imperative for improving patient safety indisputable.

The global healthcare community has faced the stark reality of the scale of unsafe care since the US Institute of Medicine publication of ‘To Err is Human’ in 1999. Since then, there have been many international and national initiatives to better understand the complexity of causes of unsafe care and the action needed to reduce harm. It is now universally agreed that healthcare needs to transform itself to a safe system with action by everyone including regulators, funders, health providers, professional bodies, industry, educators and policy makers. The cost of making improvements to patient safety is a drop in the ocean compared to the ongoing huge economic burden that unsafe care imposes.

The WHO works with Member States and partners to create patient safety strategies and policies to develop and implement safer and more sustainable health-care systems. Because of the implications on the sustainability of healthcare systems and the global economy, patient safety is being introduced as a priority on the agenda of this year’s G20 summit.

There are clear imperatives for society to take immediate action. We must eradicate harm from unsafe care. We must ensure that resources are spent on delivering safe care and not wasted on responding to this harm.

For more than 30 years RLDatix has been the leading international provider of intelligent patient safety solutions and at the forefront of patient safety technology. We welcome the transformational focus on patient safety that the G20 summit will bring and commit to contributing our thought leadership and innovation as we scale up the ambition and pace of harm reduction.

The Real Consequences of Fake Medicines

David Richmond, Chief Executive, Brazzaville Foundation

This month, African leaders will pledge to introduce tough criminal legislation to combat the proliferation of substandard and fake medical products – a deadly business that disproportionately affects the poorest and most vulnerable. They need and deserve international support.

Niger’s government is sounding the alarm about bogus meningitis vaccines – and it is not the first time. Five years ago, hundreds of Nigerien people died after receiving fake vaccines. The problem, of course, is not vaccines. It is the widespread distribution of substandard and falsified medical products. And it is a problem that disproportionately affects Africa.

The global market for medicines that are substandard (failing to meet quality specifications) or falsified (with the composition, identity, or source deliberately misrepresented) is estimated to be worth up to $200 billion, or 10-15% of the total pharmaceutical market. But it could be much bigger: according to the World Health Organization, which relies largely on voluntary reporting by health-care professionals, we may know about “just a small fraction” of all cases. What we do know is that the problem is particularly acute in Africa. In 2013-2017, 42% of substandard and falsified medicines found were on the continent. This is undermining Africa’s hard-won progress on health, not least by eroding trust in nascent health-care systems. Needless to say, the use of substandard or falsified medicines – which range from ineffective to poisonous – can have devastating consequences, with the poorest and most vulnerable being hit the hardest. After all, it is those with limited funds and poor access to medical professionals and quality health care who are most likely to buy discounted medicines on the streets, where there is no guarantee that they are real, let alone of high quality. Ultimately, this can result in much higher costs for victims, who must pay more to treat the original illness once it has progressed further, as well as for any side effects from the fake medication, if they survive at all. A 2015 study estimated that, in Sub-Saharan Africa, 122,000 children under the age of five had died in just one year as a result of substandard or falsified antimalarial medications. Moreover, since people don’t know what they are taking, let alone the proper dose, falsified and substandard medicines contribute to rising antimicrobial resistance – a trend that doesn’t discriminate between rich and poor. Yet fake-medicine traffickers have little incentive to stop. It is estimated that every $1,000 traffickers “invest” in counterfeit medicines can yield as much as $450,000 in profit. That margin is 10-25 times larger than that enjoyed by sellers of illicit narcotics. And those massive rewards are not counterbalanced by significant risk. Even when caught, fake-medicine traffickers often avoid prison time. They merely pay a fine and get back to business.

David Richmond is Chief Executive of the Brazzaville Foundation, an independent London-based charity that focuses on African issues. This op-ed originally appeared on Project-Syndicate.org on 15 January 2020.

A note on the G20 Health and Development Partnership: the threat posed by substandard and falsified medicines is expanding beyond Africa and is also a concern for G20 nations. Under this year’s G20 Presidency, led by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, it is of utmost importance that G20 leaders focus on combatting the scale of this challenge, as it not only promotes the financing of terrorism, but is also a huge burden on national economies. Moreover, there is an opportunity under this year’s G20 health agenda and its focus on patient safety, to address the dangers posed by substandard and falsified medicines on patients.

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Test to Exit COVID-19: Engaging Women Political Leaders as Champions for Testing

(London, 17th June 2020)

Register online today

COVID-19 has set the scene for women leaders around the world to understand the importance of testing to contain the health, humanitarian, and economic fallout of the pandemic. Testing has enabled countries to re-open their economies, education systems, and public life.

Currently 90% of the impact of COVID-19 is felt in G20 societies and economies. It is evident that the current crisis will impact national economies for years to come. As the current global economic burden of $90 billion exceeds the costs posed to the global economy during the financial crisis in 2008, the political choices made by G20 and all world leaders in the coming weeks, in response to the COVID-19 are of historic proportions. According to the Global Preparedness Monitoring Board – an independent WHO body – the real number of infected people is estimated to be 20 times higher than outlined in statistics.

Yet, we are facing a global crisis on testing as there are not enough tests available to test populations in order to treat them against COVID-19. New, simple, affordable and high-performing tests are still needed.

The G20 Health and Development Partnership, Women Political Leaders and FIND bring together leading women in science, global health and politics as Champions for Testing.  They highlight their experiences of successful testing in their communities and countries and why testing is the first line of defence against COVID-19 until a vaccine and a treatment become available.

Female political leaders from around the world have led by example, taking key decisions on a daily basis on how best to handle testing, which is today’s first line of defence against COVID-19.  By taking informed decisions accounting for both health and economic considerations, these leaders have enabled their countries to re-open their economies, education systems and public life. Not to forget are female frontline workers and community practitioners who put their lives at risk to save our lives.
The G20 Health and Development Partnership, Women Political Leaders (WPL), and FIND, convenor of the global testing community, have joined forces to bring together women scientific, global health, and political leaders to help inform key decisions around testing to exit COVID-19.

Register online today

CALL TO ACTION BY G20HDP MEMBERS AHEAD OF TODAY’s G20 LEADER’s SUMMIT TO ADDRESS THE COVID-19 CRISIS

(London, 26th March 2020)

(READ THE FULL PAPER HERE)

G20 leaders together with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Health Organisation (WHO), and the World Bank (WB) and the United Nations (UN) in collaboration with the private sector and other stakeholders must now take up the challenge and devise a new framework for global health security. Pandemic risk is increasing, and the global response cannot be treated as ‘disaster relief’, as we are witnessing today. Finance ministers and central bank governors must redefine health spending on R&D and system strengthening for this new global framework as legitimate public investment.

There are significant resources in pension and sovereign wealth funds which can be invested in new innovative and blended finance initiatives. There are currently USD 200 Trillion existing in capital markets globally. 1% of global capital markets can be used to close the entire SDG Gap. Less than 50% of that would close the gap in health-related SDGs.4

Private investors are keen to invest in social impact financial instruments, provided the financial regulators set out clearly the regulatory and fiscal regime. As with all private investments, the investors want to understand how a new financial instrument is regulated, whether there are tax benefits, and how return on investment is determined. The IMF, together with central bank governors and finance ministers, should urgently address these issues and encourage private and institutional investors to participate in scaled up blended and innovative finance initiatives to help meet the funding requirements of a new health security framework.

Organisations like Unitaid, Gavi, GHIT and R&D focused pharmaceutical companies have significant experience in blended financing for health and could be called upon to demonstrate practical examples of both public private financing and partnerships that have over recent years produced promising results.

Product Development Partnerships (PDPs), such as MMV, the TB Alliance and PATH often working with private sector partners understand how to bring together public, private and philanthropic finance to advance R&D to develop and scale lifesaving health products. Their knowledge has led to significant breakthroughs in scientific research.

In 2008, the world faced a potential systemic collapse of the banking and financial system. The immediate reaction of leaders at that time saw them come together, particularly within the G20. Finance ministers implemented urgent new regulation and central bank reserves were deployed to save the banking system.

The Financial Stability Board of G20 finance ministers and central bank governors was created with agreed new powers to address resilience in the financial systems. The IMF Article IV consultation and surveillance procedure was strengthened regarding resilience of national financial systems. As a result of the COVID-19 crisis, we must have a response of equal gravity and urgency to that in 2008.

The IMF must incorporate into its Article IV multilateral surveillance procedure an assessment of the resilience of national and regional health systems. This should be done in cooperation with the WHO. In addition to the WHO’s GPMB, the financial stability board should expand its mandate to include health system resilience and oversee the establishment of a multi-billion dollar fund that represents an “Advance Impact Commitment” which funds end to end solutions in innovation and product development in healthcare and strengthening weak health systems.

Today, despite warnings, the evidence and outbreaks, among others, of Ebola, SARS and MERS, we have not put in place adequate mechanisms needed to prepare, pre-empt, and hopefully, prevent a new pandemic. Hence, we need much greater investment and increased incentives for R&D into the pathogens that pose the greatest threat to our health.

Rapid diagnostics are needed to identify the pathogens and new vaccines to prevent worldwide infection from those pathogens. There is also need for greater investment and incentives for seeing how existing treatments can be used to combat new pathogens.

In 2008 and 2009 heads of government, finance ministers and central bank governors used all of the levers of government together with central bank reserves to stabilise the crisis and build a framework to prevent a future systemic crisis. We believe the recommendations outlined below will help to create a framework for the future which will protect the health of citizens and support economic growth.

Given the need to be proactive on future outbreaks, we recommend:

  1. A strengthened IMF Article IV consultation in cooperation with the WHO, to regularly evaluate national health systems resilience;
  2. The expansion of the G20 Financial Stability Board to include within its mandate health system resilience and the promotion of public/private investment in innovation and product development;
  3. An annual meeting of G20 finance & health ministers as part of the official G20 Presidency agenda;
  4. That the G20, IMF, EU, WB and the Development Banks including the IsDB and the WHO join efforts and actions and establish with urgency a multi-billion dollar financing instrument for the development of affordable vaccine, medicines and diagnostics, providing incremental funding for global clinical research as well as regulatory alignment and market preparation. This fund can also support push/pull incentives for optimized pricing through advanced market commitments/results- based delivery funding. This instrument should be focused on addressing global health threats where commercial incentive is lacking;
  5. That the G20 and the IMF examine steps necessary to encourage significant expansion of innovative financing initiatives and promote the scaling up of innovative and blended finance for health;
  6. The review of the regulatory regime for the approval of innovative medicines and vaccines to ensure earlier patient access;
  7. That the G20 and the IMF collaborate with the WHO and funders above to prioritize essential digital and data investments to strengthen the resilience of health systems, the quality and availability of early warning and disease surveillance information, and ensure an adequate supply of health workers, vaccines and other treatments as they become available;
  8. That the World Bank’s pandemic bond issue, created in 2017, which was designed to help fund the response to any widespread outbreak of a number of diseases, including coronavirus, should be triggered and potentially unlocked on April 9th. The G20HDP urges this funding to be channelled into the R&D response for COVID-19.

The global impact of unsafe care

Helen Hughes, RLDatix

Ensuring the safety of patients should be at the core of healthcare, reflected by one of the earliest maxims learned by professionals, ‘first, do no harm’. However, the stark reality is that the scale of avoidable harm caused by unsafe care worldwide is enormous. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that it is one of the 10 leading causes of death and disability worldwide.

In high income countries as many as 1 in 10 patients are harmed while receiving hospital care. The human cost of unsafe care is even more critical in low- and middle-income counties, with poor quality care accounting for 10-15% of total deaths, some 2.6 million deaths annually.

Over 80% of these deaths are avoidable.

Every avoidable death is an unnecessary tragedy for patients, families and for healthcare professionals. Beyond the cost in human lives, there are other consequences of preventable errors: loss of trust in the health care system by patients; diminished satisfaction by both patients and health professionals; the physical and psychological discomfort of patients who experience a long hospital stay or disability as a result of errors; loss of morale and frustration of health professionals at not being able to provide the best care possible. Society bears the wider cost of errors as well, in terms of lost worker productivity, reduced school attendance by children, and lower levels of population health status.

Coupled with this immense loss of life and harm, there is a staggering financial cost of unsafe care. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) estimate that unsafe care accounts for 15% of total hospital activity and expenditure in OECD countries. The global cost is trillions of dollars each year.

The financial penalty that societies endure makes the economic imperative for improving patient safety indisputable.

The global healthcare community has faced the stark reality of the scale of unsafe care since the US Institute of Medicine publication of ‘To Err is Human’ in 1999. Since then, there have been many international and national initiatives to better understand the complexity of causes of unsafe care and the action needed to reduce harm. It is now universally agreed that healthcare needs to transform itself to a safe system with action by everyone including regulators, funders, health providers, professional bodies, industry, educators and policy makers. The cost of making improvements to patient safety is a drop in the ocean compared to the ongoing huge economic burden that unsafe care imposes.

The WHO works with Member States and partners to create patient safety strategies and policies to develop and implement safer and more sustainable health-care systems. Because of the implications on the sustainability of healthcare systems and the global economy, patient safety is being introduced as a priority on the agenda of this year’s G20 summit.

There are clear imperatives for society to take immediate action. We must eradicate harm from unsafe care. We must ensure that resources are spent on delivering safe care and not wasted on responding to this harm.

For more than 30 years RLDatix has been the leading international provider of intelligent patient safety solutions and at the forefront of patient safety technology. We welcome the transformational focus on patient safety that the G20 summit will bring and commit to contributing our thought leadership and innovation as we scale up the ambition and pace of harm reduction.

The Real Consequences of Fake Medicines

David Richmond, Chief Executive, Brazzaville Foundation

This month, African leaders will pledge to introduce tough criminal legislation to combat the proliferation of substandard and fake medical products – a deadly business that disproportionately affects the poorest and most vulnerable. They need and deserve international support.

Niger’s government is sounding the alarm about bogus meningitis vaccines – and it is not the first time. Five years ago, hundreds of Nigerien people died after receiving fake vaccines. The problem, of course, is not vaccines. It is the widespread distribution of substandard and falsified medical products. And it is a problem that disproportionately affects Africa.

The global market for medicines that are substandard (failing to meet quality specifications) or falsified (with the composition, identity, or source deliberately misrepresented) is estimated to be worth up to $200 billion, or 10-15% of the total pharmaceutical market. But it could be much bigger: according to the World Health Organization, which relies largely on voluntary reporting by health-care professionals, we may know about “just a small fraction” of all cases. What we do know is that the problem is particularly acute in Africa. In 2013-2017, 42% of substandard and falsified medicines found were on the continent. This is undermining Africa’s hard-won progress on health, not least by eroding trust in nascent health-care systems. Needless to say, the use of substandard or falsified medicines – which range from ineffective to poisonous – can have devastating consequences, with the poorest and most vulnerable being hit the hardest. After all, it is those with limited funds and poor access to medical professionals and quality health care who are most likely to buy discounted medicines on the streets, where there is no guarantee that they are real, let alone of high quality. Ultimately, this can result in much higher costs for victims, who must pay more to treat the original illness once it has progressed further, as well as for any side effects from the fake medication, if they survive at all. A 2015 study estimated that, in Sub-Saharan Africa, 122,000 children under the age of five had died in just one year as a result of substandard or falsified antimalarial medications. Moreover, since people don’t know what they are taking, let alone the proper dose, falsified and substandard medicines contribute to rising antimicrobial resistance – a trend that doesn’t discriminate between rich and poor. Yet fake-medicine traffickers have little incentive to stop. It is estimated that every $1,000 traffickers “invest” in counterfeit medicines can yield as much as $450,000 in profit. That margin is 10-25 times larger than that enjoyed by sellers of illicit narcotics. And those massive rewards are not counterbalanced by significant risk. Even when caught, fake-medicine traffickers often avoid prison time. They merely pay a fine and get back to business.

David Richmond is Chief Executive of the Brazzaville Foundation, an independent London-based charity that focuses on African issues. This op-ed originally appeared on Project-Syndicate.org on 15 January 2020.

A note on the G20 Health and Development Partnership: the threat posed by substandard and falsified medicines is expanding beyond Africa and is also a concern for G20 nations. Under this year’s G20 Presidency, led by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, it is of utmost importance that G20 leaders focus on combatting the scale of this challenge, as it not only promotes the financing of terrorism, but is also a huge burden on national economies. Moreover, there is an opportunity under this year’s G20 health agenda and its focus on patient safety, to address the dangers posed by substandard and falsified medicines on patients.

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Test to Exit COVID-19: Engaging Women Political Leaders as Champions for Testing

(London, 17th June 2020)

Register online today

COVID-19 has set the scene for women leaders around the world to understand the importance of testing to contain the health, humanitarian, and economic fallout of the pandemic. Testing has enabled countries to re-open their economies, education systems, and public life.

Currently 90% of the impact of COVID-19 is felt in G20 societies and economies. It is evident that the current crisis will impact national economies for years to come. As the current global economic burden of $90 billion exceeds the costs posed to the global economy during the financial crisis in 2008, the political choices made by G20 and all world leaders in the coming weeks, in response to the COVID-19 are of historic proportions. According to the Global Preparedness Monitoring Board – an independent WHO body – the real number of infected people is estimated to be 20 times higher than outlined in statistics.

Yet, we are facing a global crisis on testing as there are not enough tests available to test populations in order to treat them against COVID-19. New, simple, affordable and high-performing tests are still needed.

The G20 Health and Development Partnership, Women Political Leaders and FIND bring together leading women in science, global health and politics as Champions for Testing.  They highlight their experiences of successful testing in their communities and countries and why testing is the first line of defence against COVID-19 until a vaccine and a treatment become available.

Female political leaders from around the world have led by example, taking key decisions on a daily basis on how best to handle testing, which is today’s first line of defence against COVID-19.  By taking informed decisions accounting for both health and economic considerations, these leaders have enabled their countries to re-open their economies, education systems and public life. Not to forget are female frontline workers and community practitioners who put their lives at risk to save our lives.
The G20 Health and Development Partnership, Women Political Leaders (WPL), and FIND, convenor of the global testing community, have joined forces to bring together women scientific, global health, and political leaders to help inform key decisions around testing to exit COVID-19.

Register online today

CALL TO ACTION BY G20HDP MEMBERS AHEAD OF TODAY’s G20 LEADER’s SUMMIT TO ADDRESS THE COVID-19 CRISIS

(London, 26th March 2020)

(READ THE FULL PAPER HERE)

G20 leaders together with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Health Organisation (WHO), and the World Bank (WB) and the United Nations (UN) in collaboration with the private sector and other stakeholders must now take up the challenge and devise a new framework for global health security. Pandemic risk is increasing, and the global response cannot be treated as ‘disaster relief’, as we are witnessing today. Finance ministers and central bank governors must redefine health spending on R&D and system strengthening for this new global framework as legitimate public investment.

There are significant resources in pension and sovereign wealth funds which can be invested in new innovative and blended finance initiatives. There are currently USD 200 Trillion existing in capital markets globally. 1% of global capital markets can be used to close the entire SDG Gap. Less than 50% of that would close the gap in health-related SDGs.4

Private investors are keen to invest in social impact financial instruments, provided the financial regulators set out clearly the regulatory and fiscal regime. As with all private investments, the investors want to understand how a new financial instrument is regulated, whether there are tax benefits, and how return on investment is determined. The IMF, together with central bank governors and finance ministers, should urgently address these issues and encourage private and institutional investors to participate in scaled up blended and innovative finance initiatives to help meet the funding requirements of a new health security framework.

Organisations like Unitaid, Gavi, GHIT and R&D focused pharmaceutical companies have significant experience in blended financing for health and could be called upon to demonstrate practical examples of both public private financing and partnerships that have over recent years produced promising results.

Product Development Partnerships (PDPs), such as MMV, the TB Alliance and PATH often working with private sector partners understand how to bring together public, private and philanthropic finance to advance R&D to develop and scale lifesaving health products. Their knowledge has led to significant breakthroughs in scientific research.

In 2008, the world faced a potential systemic collapse of the banking and financial system. The immediate reaction of leaders at that time saw them come together, particularly within the G20. Finance ministers implemented urgent new regulation and central bank reserves were deployed to save the banking system.

The Financial Stability Board of G20 finance ministers and central bank governors was created with agreed new powers to address resilience in the financial systems. The IMF Article IV consultation and surveillance procedure was strengthened regarding resilience of national financial systems. As a result of the COVID-19 crisis, we must have a response of equal gravity and urgency to that in 2008.

The IMF must incorporate into its Article IV multilateral surveillance procedure an assessment of the resilience of national and regional health systems. This should be done in cooperation with the WHO. In addition to the WHO’s GPMB, the financial stability board should expand its mandate to include health system resilience and oversee the establishment of a multi-billion dollar fund that represents an “Advance Impact Commitment” which funds end to end solutions in innovation and product development in healthcare and strengthening weak health systems.

Today, despite warnings, the evidence and outbreaks, among others, of Ebola, SARS and MERS, we have not put in place adequate mechanisms needed to prepare, pre-empt, and hopefully, prevent a new pandemic. Hence, we need much greater investment and increased incentives for R&D into the pathogens that pose the greatest threat to our health.

Rapid diagnostics are needed to identify the pathogens and new vaccines to prevent worldwide infection from those pathogens. There is also need for greater investment and incentives for seeing how existing treatments can be used to combat new pathogens.

In 2008 and 2009 heads of government, finance ministers and central bank governors used all of the levers of government together with central bank reserves to stabilise the crisis and build a framework to prevent a future systemic crisis. We believe the recommendations outlined below will help to create a framework for the future which will protect the health of citizens and support economic growth.

Given the need to be proactive on future outbreaks, we recommend:

  1. A strengthened IMF Article IV consultation in cooperation with the WHO, to regularly evaluate national health systems resilience;
  2. The expansion of the G20 Financial Stability Board to include within its mandate health system resilience and the promotion of public/private investment in innovation and product development;
  3. An annual meeting of G20 finance & health ministers as part of the official G20 Presidency agenda;
  4. That the G20, IMF, EU, WB and the Development Banks including the IsDB and the WHO join efforts and actions and establish with urgency a multi-billion dollar financing instrument for the development of affordable vaccine, medicines and diagnostics, providing incremental funding for global clinical research as well as regulatory alignment and market preparation. This fund can also support push/pull incentives for optimized pricing through advanced market commitments/results- based delivery funding. This instrument should be focused on addressing global health threats where commercial incentive is lacking;
  5. That the G20 and the IMF examine steps necessary to encourage significant expansion of innovative financing initiatives and promote the scaling up of innovative and blended finance for health;
  6. The review of the regulatory regime for the approval of innovative medicines and vaccines to ensure earlier patient access;
  7. That the G20 and the IMF collaborate with the WHO and funders above to prioritize essential digital and data investments to strengthen the resilience of health systems, the quality and availability of early warning and disease surveillance information, and ensure an adequate supply of health workers, vaccines and other treatments as they become available;
  8. That the World Bank’s pandemic bond issue, created in 2017, which was designed to help fund the response to any widespread outbreak of a number of diseases, including coronavirus, should be triggered and potentially unlocked on April 9th. The G20HDP urges this funding to be channelled into the R&D response for COVID-19.

The global impact of unsafe care

Helen Hughes, RLDatix

Ensuring the safety of patients should be at the core of healthcare, reflected by one of the earliest maxims learned by professionals, ‘first, do no harm’. However, the stark reality is that the scale of avoidable harm caused by unsafe care worldwide is enormous. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that it is one of the 10 leading causes of death and disability worldwide.

In high income countries as many as 1 in 10 patients are harmed while receiving hospital care. The human cost of unsafe care is even more critical in low- and middle-income counties, with poor quality care accounting for 10-15% of total deaths, some 2.6 million deaths annually.

Over 80% of these deaths are avoidable.

Every avoidable death is an unnecessary tragedy for patients, families and for healthcare professionals. Beyond the cost in human lives, there are other consequences of preventable errors: loss of trust in the health care system by patients; diminished satisfaction by both patients and health professionals; the physical and psychological discomfort of patients who experience a long hospital stay or disability as a result of errors; loss of morale and frustration of health professionals at not being able to provide the best care possible. Society bears the wider cost of errors as well, in terms of lost worker productivity, reduced school attendance by children, and lower levels of population health status.

Coupled with this immense loss of life and harm, there is a staggering financial cost of unsafe care. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) estimate that unsafe care accounts for 15% of total hospital activity and expenditure in OECD countries. The global cost is trillions of dollars each year.

The financial penalty that societies endure makes the economic imperative for improving patient safety indisputable.

The global healthcare community has faced the stark reality of the scale of unsafe care since the US Institute of Medicine publication of ‘To Err is Human’ in 1999. Since then, there have been many international and national initiatives to better understand the complexity of causes of unsafe care and the action needed to reduce harm. It is now universally agreed that healthcare needs to transform itself to a safe system with action by everyone including regulators, funders, health providers, professional bodies, industry, educators and policy makers. The cost of making improvements to patient safety is a drop in the ocean compared to the ongoing huge economic burden that unsafe care imposes.

The WHO works with Member States and partners to create patient safety strategies and policies to develop and implement safer and more sustainable health-care systems. Because of the implications on the sustainability of healthcare systems and the global economy, patient safety is being introduced as a priority on the agenda of this year’s G20 summit.

There are clear imperatives for society to take immediate action. We must eradicate harm from unsafe care. We must ensure that resources are spent on delivering safe care and not wasted on responding to this harm.

For more than 30 years RLDatix has been the leading international provider of intelligent patient safety solutions and at the forefront of patient safety technology. We welcome the transformational focus on patient safety that the G20 summit will bring and commit to contributing our thought leadership and innovation as we scale up the ambition and pace of harm reduction.

The Real Consequences of Fake Medicines

David Richmond, Chief Executive, Brazzaville Foundation

This month, African leaders will pledge to introduce tough criminal legislation to combat the proliferation of substandard and fake medical products – a deadly business that disproportionately affects the poorest and most vulnerable. They need and deserve international support.

Niger’s government is sounding the alarm about bogus meningitis vaccines – and it is not the first time. Five years ago, hundreds of Nigerien people died after receiving fake vaccines. The problem, of course, is not vaccines. It is the widespread distribution of substandard and falsified medical products. And it is a problem that disproportionately affects Africa.

The global market for medicines that are substandard (failing to meet quality specifications) or falsified (with the composition, identity, or source deliberately misrepresented) is estimated to be worth up to $200 billion, or 10-15% of the total pharmaceutical market. But it could be much bigger: according to the World Health Organization, which relies largely on voluntary reporting by health-care professionals, we may know about “just a small fraction” of all cases. What we do know is that the problem is particularly acute in Africa. In 2013-2017, 42% of substandard and falsified medicines found were on the continent. This is undermining Africa’s hard-won progress on health, not least by eroding trust in nascent health-care systems. Needless to say, the use of substandard or falsified medicines – which range from ineffective to poisonous – can have devastating consequences, with the poorest and most vulnerable being hit the hardest. After all, it is those with limited funds and poor access to medical professionals and quality health care who are most likely to buy discounted medicines on the streets, where there is no guarantee that they are real, let alone of high quality. Ultimately, this can result in much higher costs for victims, who must pay more to treat the original illness once it has progressed further, as well as for any side effects from the fake medication, if they survive at all. A 2015 study estimated that, in Sub-Saharan Africa, 122,000 children under the age of five had died in just one year as a result of substandard or falsified antimalarial medications. Moreover, since people don’t know what they are taking, let alone the proper dose, falsified and substandard medicines contribute to rising antimicrobial resistance – a trend that doesn’t discriminate between rich and poor. Yet fake-medicine traffickers have little incentive to stop. It is estimated that every $1,000 traffickers “invest” in counterfeit medicines can yield as much as $450,000 in profit. That margin is 10-25 times larger than that enjoyed by sellers of illicit narcotics. And those massive rewards are not counterbalanced by significant risk. Even when caught, fake-medicine traffickers often avoid prison time. They merely pay a fine and get back to business.

David Richmond is Chief Executive of the Brazzaville Foundation, an independent London-based charity that focuses on African issues. This op-ed originally appeared on Project-Syndicate.org on 15 January 2020.

A note on the G20 Health and Development Partnership: the threat posed by substandard and falsified medicines is expanding beyond Africa and is also a concern for G20 nations. Under this year’s G20 Presidency, led by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, it is of utmost importance that G20 leaders focus on combatting the scale of this challenge, as it not only promotes the financing of terrorism, but is also a huge burden on national economies. Moreover, there is an opportunity under this year’s G20 health agenda and its focus on patient safety, to address the dangers posed by substandard and falsified medicines on patients.

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The global impact of unsafe care

Helen Hughes, RLDatix

Ensuring the safety of patients should be at the core of healthcare, reflected by one of the earliest maxims learned by professionals, ‘first, do no harm’. However, the stark reality is that the scale of avoidable harm caused by unsafe care worldwide is enormous. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that it is one of the 10 leading causes of death and disability worldwide.

In high income countries as many as 1 in 10 patients are harmed while receiving hospital care. The human cost of unsafe care is even more critical in low- and middle-income counties, with poor quality care accounting for 10-15% of total deaths, some 2.6 million deaths annually.

Over 80% of these deaths are avoidable.

Every avoidable death is an unnecessary tragedy for patients, families and for healthcare professionals. Beyond the cost in human lives, there are other consequences of preventable errors: loss of trust in the health care system by patients; diminished satisfaction by both patients and health professionals; the physical and psychological discomfort of patients who experience a long hospital stay or disability as a result of errors; loss of morale and frustration of health professionals at not being able to provide the best care possible. Society bears the wider cost of errors as well, in terms of lost worker productivity, reduced school attendance by children, and lower levels of population health status.

Coupled with this immense loss of life and harm, there is a staggering financial cost of unsafe care. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) estimate that unsafe care accounts for 15% of total hospital activity and expenditure in OECD countries. The global cost is trillions of dollars each year.

The financial penalty that societies endure makes the economic imperative for improving patient safety indisputable.

The global healthcare community has faced the stark reality of the scale of unsafe care since the US Institute of Medicine publication of ‘To Err is Human’ in 1999. Since then, there have been many international and national initiatives to better understand the complexity of causes of unsafe care and the action needed to reduce harm. It is now universally agreed that healthcare needs to transform itself to a safe system with action by everyone including regulators, funders, health providers, professional bodies, industry, educators and policy makers. The cost of making improvements to patient safety is a drop in the ocean compared to the ongoing huge economic burden that unsafe care imposes.

The WHO works with Member States and partners to create patient safety strategies and policies to develop and implement safer and more sustainable health-care systems. Because of the implications on the sustainability of healthcare systems and the global economy, patient safety is being introduced as a priority on the agenda of this year’s G20 summit.

There are clear imperatives for society to take immediate action. We must eradicate harm from unsafe care. We must ensure that resources are spent on delivering safe care and not wasted on responding to this harm.

For more than 30 years RLDatix has been the leading international provider of intelligent patient safety solutions and at the forefront of patient safety technology. We welcome the transformational focus on patient safety that the G20 summit will bring and commit to contributing our thought leadership and innovation as we scale up the ambition and pace of harm reduction.

The Real Consequences of Fake Medicines

David Richmond, Chief Executive, Brazzaville Foundation

This month, African leaders will pledge to introduce tough criminal legislation to combat the proliferation of substandard and fake medical products – a deadly business that disproportionately affects the poorest and most vulnerable. They need and deserve international support.

Niger’s government is sounding the alarm about bogus meningitis vaccines – and it is not the first time. Five years ago, hundreds of Nigerien people died after receiving fake vaccines. The problem, of course, is not vaccines. It is the widespread distribution of substandard and falsified medical products. And it is a problem that disproportionately affects Africa.

The global market for medicines that are substandard (failing to meet quality specifications) or falsified (with the composition, identity, or source deliberately misrepresented) is estimated to be worth up to $200 billion, or 10-15% of the total pharmaceutical market. But it could be much bigger: according to the World Health Organization, which relies largely on voluntary reporting by health-care professionals, we may know about “just a small fraction” of all cases. What we do know is that the problem is particularly acute in Africa. In 2013-2017, 42% of substandard and falsified medicines found were on the continent. This is undermining Africa’s hard-won progress on health, not least by eroding trust in nascent health-care systems. Needless to say, the use of substandard or falsified medicines – which range from ineffective to poisonous – can have devastating consequences, with the poorest and most vulnerable being hit the hardest. After all, it is those with limited funds and poor access to medical professionals and quality health care who are most likely to buy discounted medicines on the streets, where there is no guarantee that they are real, let alone of high quality. Ultimately, this can result in much higher costs for victims, who must pay more to treat the original illness once it has progressed further, as well as for any side effects from the fake medication, if they survive at all. A 2015 study estimated that, in Sub-Saharan Africa, 122,000 children under the age of five had died in just one year as a result of substandard or falsified antimalarial medications. Moreover, since people don’t know what they are taking, let alone the proper dose, falsified and substandard medicines contribute to rising antimicrobial resistance – a trend that doesn’t discriminate between rich and poor. Yet fake-medicine traffickers have little incentive to stop. It is estimated that every $1,000 traffickers “invest” in counterfeit medicines can yield as much as $450,000 in profit. That margin is 10-25 times larger than that enjoyed by sellers of illicit narcotics. And those massive rewards are not counterbalanced by significant risk. Even when caught, fake-medicine traffickers often avoid prison time. They merely pay a fine and get back to business.

David Richmond is Chief Executive of the Brazzaville Foundation, an independent London-based charity that focuses on African issues. This op-ed originally appeared on Project-Syndicate.org on 15 January 2020.

A note on the G20 Health and Development Partnership: the threat posed by substandard and falsified medicines is expanding beyond Africa and is also a concern for G20 nations. Under this year’s G20 Presidency, led by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, it is of utmost importance that G20 leaders focus on combatting the scale of this challenge, as it not only promotes the financing of terrorism, but is also a huge burden on national economies. Moreover, there is an opportunity under this year’s G20 health agenda and its focus on patient safety, to address the dangers posed by substandard and falsified medicines on patients.

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The global impact of unsafe care

Helen Hughes, RLDatix

Ensuring the safety of patients should be at the core of healthcare, reflected by one of the earliest maxims learned by professionals, ‘first, do no harm’. However, the stark reality is that the scale of avoidable harm caused by unsafe care worldwide is enormous. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that it is one of the 10 leading causes of death and disability worldwide.

In high income countries as many as 1 in 10 patients are harmed while receiving hospital care. The human cost of unsafe care is even more critical in low- and middle-income counties, with poor quality care accounting for 10-15% of total deaths, some 2.6 million deaths annually.

Over 80% of these deaths are avoidable.

Every avoidable death is an unnecessary tragedy for patients, families and for healthcare professionals. Beyond the cost in human lives, there are other consequences of preventable errors: loss of trust in the health care system by patients; diminished satisfaction by both patients and health professionals; the physical and psychological discomfort of patients who experience a long hospital stay or disability as a result of errors; loss of morale and frustration of health professionals at not being able to provide the best care possible. Society bears the wider cost of errors as well, in terms of lost worker productivity, reduced school attendance by children, and lower levels of population health status.

Coupled with this immense loss of life and harm, there is a staggering financial cost of unsafe care. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) estimate that unsafe care accounts for 15% of total hospital activity and expenditure in OECD countries. The global cost is trillions of dollars each year.

The financial penalty that societies endure makes the economic imperative for improving patient safety indisputable.

The global healthcare community has faced the stark reality of the scale of unsafe care since the US Institute of Medicine publication of ‘To Err is Human’ in 1999. Since then, there have been many international and national initiatives to better understand the complexity of causes of unsafe care and the action needed to reduce harm. It is now universally agreed that healthcare needs to transform itself to a safe system with action by everyone including regulators, funders, health providers, professional bodies, industry, educators and policy makers. The cost of making improvements to patient safety is a drop in the ocean compared to the ongoing huge economic burden that unsafe care imposes.

The WHO works with Member States and partners to create patient safety strategies and policies to develop and implement safer and more sustainable health-care systems. Because of the implications on the sustainability of healthcare systems and the global economy, patient safety is being introduced as a priority on the agenda of this year’s G20 summit.

There are clear imperatives for society to take immediate action. We must eradicate harm from unsafe care. We must ensure that resources are spent on delivering safe care and not wasted on responding to this harm.

For more than 30 years RLDatix has been the leading international provider of intelligent patient safety solutions and at the forefront of patient safety technology. We welcome the transformational focus on patient safety that the G20 summit will bring and commit to contributing our thought leadership and innovation as we scale up the ambition and pace of harm reduction.

The Real Consequences of Fake Medicines

David Richmond, Chief Executive, Brazzaville Foundation

This month, African leaders will pledge to introduce tough criminal legislation to combat the proliferation of substandard and fake medical products – a deadly business that disproportionately affects the poorest and most vulnerable. They need and deserve international support.

Niger’s government is sounding the alarm about bogus meningitis vaccines – and it is not the first time. Five years ago, hundreds of Nigerien people died after receiving fake vaccines. The problem, of course, is not vaccines. It is the widespread distribution of substandard and falsified medical products. And it is a problem that disproportionately affects Africa.

The global market for medicines that are substandard (failing to meet quality specifications) or falsified (with the composition, identity, or source deliberately misrepresented) is estimated to be worth up to $200 billion, or 10-15% of the total pharmaceutical market. But it could be much bigger: according to the World Health Organization, which relies largely on voluntary reporting by health-care professionals, we may know about “just a small fraction” of all cases. What we do know is that the problem is particularly acute in Africa. In 2013-2017, 42% of substandard and falsified medicines found were on the continent. This is undermining Africa’s hard-won progress on health, not least by eroding trust in nascent health-care systems. Needless to say, the use of substandard or falsified medicines – which range from ineffective to poisonous – can have devastating consequences, with the poorest and most vulnerable being hit the hardest. After all, it is those with limited funds and poor access to medical professionals and quality health care who are most likely to buy discounted medicines on the streets, where there is no guarantee that they are real, let alone of high quality. Ultimately, this can result in much higher costs for victims, who must pay more to treat the original illness once it has progressed further, as well as for any side effects from the fake medication, if they survive at all. A 2015 study estimated that, in Sub-Saharan Africa, 122,000 children under the age of five had died in just one year as a result of substandard or falsified antimalarial medications. Moreover, since people don’t know what they are taking, let alone the proper dose, falsified and substandard medicines contribute to rising antimicrobial resistance – a trend that doesn’t discriminate between rich and poor. Yet fake-medicine traffickers have little incentive to stop. It is estimated that every $1,000 traffickers “invest” in counterfeit medicines can yield as much as $450,000 in profit. That margin is 10-25 times larger than that enjoyed by sellers of illicit narcotics. And those massive rewards are not counterbalanced by significant risk. Even when caught, fake-medicine traffickers often avoid prison time. They merely pay a fine and get back to business.

David Richmond is Chief Executive of the Brazzaville Foundation, an independent London-based charity that focuses on African issues. This op-ed originally appeared on Project-Syndicate.org on 15 January 2020.

A note on the G20 Health and Development Partnership: the threat posed by substandard and falsified medicines is expanding beyond Africa and is also a concern for G20 nations. Under this year’s G20 Presidency, led by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, it is of utmost importance that G20 leaders focus on combatting the scale of this challenge, as it not only promotes the financing of terrorism, but is also a huge burden on national economies. Moreover, there is an opportunity under this year’s G20 health agenda and its focus on patient safety, to address the dangers posed by substandard and falsified medicines on patients.

Our G20HDP Partner Harald Nusser awarded with the Schwab Foundation Price For Social Entrepreneurship

We would like to congratulate our G20 Health and Development Partnership Member, Harald Nusser, Head of Novartis Social Business for winning the Schwab Foundation Award under the category Corporate Social Intrapreneurs. Harald is awarded as one of the influential leaders within a multinational company who drive the development of new products, initiatives, services or business models that address societal and environmental challenges.

This years awards for the first time brought together the intersectoral community of social innovators at the World Economic Forum by introducing three new categories, in addition to their Social Entrepreneur awards.

For over 20 years, the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship has recognized social entrepreneurs as a new breed of leader – values-driven, inclusive, compassionate, entrepreneurial individuals who develop sustainable new models in business, social development and environmental initiatives. They have been at the forefront of R&D for society and civilization, accelerating how we solve problems and imagining new futures through experimentation, iteration and practice.

In these two decades, they have curated and gathered over 350 leading social entrepreneurs from 70 countries in the Schwab Foundation community and embedded them into the platforms of the World Economic Forum. Together, they have demonstrated significant progress on how they approach environmental sustainability and consumption, health and education, rural development and job training, and finding new ways to advance human rights and equality in different contexts around the world.

To find out more, please click here.

New Global Ambassador joining the Partnership!

We would like to thank our new Global Ambassador, Ajay Kumar Bramdeo, Permanent Observer of the African Union to the United Nations Office in Geneva to join the G20 Health and Development Partnership. We welcome the support of the African Union and look forward to collaborating with the AU in the framework of our G20 Activities.

To find out more, please click here.

Innovative Financing Mechanisms for Healthier Nations – The G20 Health & Development Partnership Welcomes the 2019 G20 Leaders Declaration

Osaka, 28-29 June 2019

Last weekend, G20 Heads of State have assembled for this year’s G20 Summit in Osaka in order to discuss the most pressing issues that G20 nations will face in terms of the Global Economy, the Financial System, Trade and Investment to come over the next months. While the summit was dominated by topics such as the trade talks between the US and China, G20 Leaders also heavily focused on determinants for an inclusive and sustainable world that that are heavily dependent on the broader Development agenda and on Global Health.

As a first this year, Health and Finance Ministers of the G20 assembled for a dinner on 28th June in Osaka and have agreed that health is a prerequisite for sustainable and inclusive economic growth.

The G20 Health & Development Partnership, a health advocacy group that assembled over 16 cross-sectoral health organisations from across the globe and organised this year’s Health 20 Summit, welcome the ambitious G20 Leaders Declaration led by the Government of Japan that reflects the importance of the health and the wealth of nations.

Since the beginning of the first G7 Summit hosted by Japan in 1979 when the word ‘Health’ first appeared in the official statement by the Heads of State and Government, Japan has continued its leadership role by initiating The Global Fund To Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria and the G8 Digital Opportunity Taskforce (DOT) at the Kyushu-Okinawa Summit in 2000, towards the Call for Action on Health Systems Strengthening at the G8 Hokkaido Toyako Summit in 2008.

Japan has prominently shown its leadership role in health in this year’s G20 agenda by focussing on UHC, Ageing Societies and the Management of Health Emergencies including antimicrobial resistance (AMR).

The G20 Health and Development Partnership that organised their annual Health 20 Summit in Tokyo, on 24 June, with the support of health experts from around the globe, submitted a Call to Action to G20 Heads of State and Government and Health and Finance Ministers ahead of their meeting in Osaka.

As a result of the Health 20 Summit Call to Action document and in convergence with the G20 Leaders Declaration, The G20 Health & Development Partnership welcomes the importance of sustainable financing for health and the call for greater collaboration between health and finance authorities in accordance with the G20 Shared Understanding on the Importance of UHC Financing in Developing Countries.

Attendees of the Health 20 Summit further urged the Joint Health and Finance Ministers Meeting in Osaka to become the first of a regular and meaningful joint dialogue within the annual G20 calendar with the next joint meeting held in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in 2020.

The H20 Summit agrees with G20 Leaders on the recognition of international public and private finance for development as well as other innovative financing mechanisms, including blended finance that can play an important role in up-scaling our collective efforts.

Participants of the H20 Summit also agreed that in order to achieve these goals emerging economies and Middle-Income Countries (MICs) need to play a more significant role in co-founding health innovation.

As there are many public and private organisations, including multilateral organisations participating in the G20, including the OECD, that act as the strategic advisor to the G20, as well as the WHO and the World Bank, are conducting work related to innovative forms of financing for health. Attendees of the Health 20 Summit believe that this work lacks high level political support and most importantly coordination. This is why Health 20 Summit participants called for the launch of a time-limited, high-level examination of innovative and blended finance initiatives that are scalable, to supplement current investments in health innovation, with the involvement of international organisations, philanthropic partners and non-traditional actors to report during the 2020 G20 Presidency of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the 2020 G7 Presidency of the United States.

The Health 20 Summit also supports and welcomes the call by G20 Leaders for further action to promote stewardship of and access to antimicrobials by noting the ongoing work done by Global AMR R&D Hub, to promote R&D to tackle AMR.

Congratulating the stewardship on the digital agenda, the Health 20 Summit Call to Action expresses the support for the inclusion of the promotion of global digital health in the G20 and urge for the building of a “data free-flow with trust” at the leader’s Osaka June communiqué and Health Ministers Declaration in Okayama in October 2019 and the prioritisation of digital health in the G20 Presidency of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in 2020.

The G20 Health & Development Partnership (G20 HDP) is an advocacy organisation that aims to ensure that G20 countries are coordinating their health innovation strategy to tackle the growing burden of communicable and non-communicable diseases globally to promote the delivery of SDG 3. The Partnership emerged as an informal coalition of like-minded organisations during the G20 Presidency in Germany in 2017 respecting the objectives of SDG 17. Following broad interest to build on the initiative leading up to the Argentinian G20 Presidency in 2018, Sovereign Sustainability and Development (SSD) was created in late 2017 to act as the secretariat of the Partnership. During a working session in the UK Houses of Parliament in December 2017, with the support of the founding organisations, the G20 HDP was formally launched. The Partnership comprises of 16 cross-sectoral partners including product development partnerships, non-for-profit and international organisations, public-private partnerships, pharmaceuticals, associations, research institutes and academia.

Annual Health20 Summit 2019 – Financing for Global Health Innovation & Sustainable Development

Tokyo, 24th June 2019

Photo credit: Shuhei Inoue

On 24th June 2019, the G20 Partnership held their annual Health20 Summit in Tokyo, leading up to the G20 Summit and the Joint Session of Health and Finance Ministers on 28th June 2019. In the summit, the G20’s top health and health financing experts urged G20 government Leaders, Health and Finance Ministers to significantly boost investment in the health of their citizens in order to promote sustainable economic development and inclusive growth.

Meeting in Tokyo on the eve of the Osaka G20 summit, the Health 20 Summit recognised that specific innovations in health are urgently required to help achieve Universal Health Coverage by 2030.  Health experts called for Innovative Financing initiatives (IFI) to be expanded and scaled up in order to help finance the research and development needed for the new diagnostics, vaccines and medicines required to tackle the growing problem of drug resistant diseases. Moreover, attendees called for a closer cooperation between health and finance authorities in the G20 to tackle some of the most pressing challenges faced by infectious and non-communicable diseases. The Health 20 Summit also urged the G20 Heads of State and Government to recognise the inter-dependency of the emerging global digital health ecosystem where a radical new multi-stakeholder approach is required by all governments in delivering their National Digital Health Strategies.

 

The summit was opened by H.E. Norikazu Suzuki, Parliamentary Vice-Minister for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan congratulating the cooperation of cross-sectoral health stakeholders. H.E. Ambassador Laurent Pic, Ambassador of France in Tokyo as well as Mr Kiya Masahiko, Deputy Assistant Minister of the International Cooperation Bureau at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs urged the importance of financing of health innovation and the achievement of SGD3 Goals.

Alan Donnelly, Chair of the H20Summit and Convenor of the G20 Health & Development Partnership said: “Several G20 countries are already using innovative financing initiatives to fund this essential research, and it is for the G20 Heads of Government and Finance Ministers to agree to rapidly scale up and expand these new methods to help meet the funding deficit.”Participants of the summit formulated a Call to Action https://www.ssdhub.org/japan-call-to-action/  that was jointly sent to G20 Governments ahead of the Osaka G20 Leaders’ Summit. The “Call to Action” was submitted to all G20 Heads of States, and Finance and Health Ministers prior to the G20 Summit and the Joint Session of Health and Finance Ministers on 28th June 2019.

The Health20 Summit is an annual platform, organised by The G20 Health and Development Partnership, that offers experts from across the health sectors to come together and discuss solutions for the most recent and future challenges that will halt the timely achievement of SDG3 by 2030. This year’s summit  brought together over 100 participants under the umbrella of SDG 17, to create more Partnership’s, that included senior representatives from the Japanese government, G20 Embassies in Tokyo, Product Development Partnerships, Public-Private Partnerships, NGOs, senior politicians from G20 countries, the private sector, pharmaceutical and academic institutions to explore new and innovative ways of funding research and development (R&D) and delivery in tackling the growing disease burden.

Media Coverage:

AMR represents a growing threat to public health and economic growth

(A guest comment by Dr. Elmar Nimmesgern, Secretariat Lead Global AMR R&D Hub, 27th May 2019)

Antibiotics have been a critical tool since the discovery of penicillin in 1928, saving the lives of millions of people and animals around the world. The emergence and spread of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) are reducing the efficacy of these lifesaving medicines. AMR represents a growing threat to public health and economic growth.

The Global Antimicrobial Resistance Research and Development (R&D) Hub was launched in May 2018, following a call from G20 Leaders, to address challenges and improve coordination and collaboration in global AMR R&D using a One Health approach.

It is a global partnership consisting of 15 countries, the European Commission and two philanthropic foundations steering the work through a Board of Members. The work of the Board is supported by a small Secretariat based in Berlin.

Though it arose from the G20, the Global AMR R&D Hub is open to non-G20 countries as well as non-governmental donor organisations investing in AMR R&D. Any country or organisation sharing the vision and objectives of the Global AMR R&D Hub is invited to join and strengthen the global AMR R&D landscape. The vision of the Global AMR R&D Hub is to promote high-level coordination and alignment of existing public and private funding and activities and to leverage much needed further monetary and other investments for AMR R&D initiatives.

The main objectives of the Global AMR R&D Hub are to identify and prioritise AMR R&D gaps, promote increased investments into push and pull incentives to help fill product pipelines, and to foster international research collaboration.

One of the key activities for the Global AMR R&D Hub is the development of a close to real-time dynamic dashboard to be launched in December 2019. It will become the global knowledge centre on current initiatives and publicly and privately funded AMR R&D across the One Health continuum. The dashboard will eventually lead to more efficient use of international resources through the identification of gaps, overlaps and opportunities for cross-sectoral collaboration and leveraging of resources for AMR R&D.

Consultation with relevant stakeholders is vital to the success of the work of the Global AMR R&D Hub and a Stakeholder Group has been established. The Board of Members will also receive advice from thematic Expert Advisory Groups and a group to evaluate the market potential of interventions targeting the pathogens on the WHO priority pathogen list as well as tuberculosis has been established. It is expected that this analysis will be helpful to guide the discussion around investments into push and pull incentives for AMR R&D.

The first workshop organised by the Global R&D Hub takes place in Geneva on 28 May bringing together around 100 high-level experts to discuss opportunities for investments and new and innovative financing mechanisms for AMR R&D and to give recommendations especially on how the Global AMR R&D Hub can support these activities in a One Health approach.

www.globalamrhub.org

At 72nd World Health Assembly week, Alan Donnelly calls for enhanced collaboration with micro-entrepreneurs and between Health and Finance Ministers to advance on the issue of digital health

(Health Policy Watch, 22nd May 2019)

During this year’s World Health Assembly week in Geneva, Alan Donnelly, Convener of the G20 Health & Development Partnership (G20 HDP), highlighted the growing importance of digital health.  He advocates for collaboration between Finance and Health Ministries to scale up digital health innovations. Alan Donnelly also stressed the necessity for global health institutions and organisations, such as the UN and the WHO, to engage more extensively with the private sector. Indeed, micro-entrepreneurs and micro-businesses invent ingenious grassroot innovations that could address some global health challenges, such as achieving Universal Health Coverage by 2030. Some of these digital innovations that are featured in our Healthy Nations – Sustainable Economies report will be presented to G20 Health and Finance representatives during the G20 HDP’s Health 20 Conference in Tokyo, on 24 June; leading up to the official G20 joint Session between Finance and Health Ministers on 28th June. 

Read the full interview here:

Alan Donnelly, Convener of the G20 Partnership, calls on G20 Health and Finance Ministers for increased cooperation and scaling up innovative financing models to effectively tackle global health challenges

(Japan Times, 5th April)

In his recent interview with the Japan Times, Alan Donnelly, Convenor of the G20 Health & Development Partnership, stressed the necessity of increased multi-sectoral cooperation to effectively tackle global health challenges and highlighted the strong link between global health and the economy. Alan said that there are successful programmes now in place that the G20 leaders could tap to raise funds towards new financing efforts to not only guard against a potential pandemic, but also support other global health initiatives. Some of those financial instruments such as new bonds, like a previously created vaccine bond, could be issued. Moreover, certain kinds of new levies similar to the one in France that supports Unitaid could be created. Together with the support of Partners of the G20 Health and Development Partnership, in a recently published report “Healthy Nations Sustainable Economies,” Alan pledged that G20  Finance and Health Ministers could ask the OECD and the World Bank, together with the WHO, to create a high-level panel that would look into ways to scale up blended finance models and establishing new long-term ways of funding innovation in health. The panel’s proposals can be presented during the G20 presidency of Saudi Arabia in 2020,” he added.

Read the full interview here: