Key takeaways from the World Health Summit
This week, Frontline AIDS participated in the World Health Summit (WHS) in Berlin, a major global forum that gathers leaders from politics, science, the private sector, and civil society from around the world to address pressing global health challenges. Over three days, Frontline AIDS staff worked to build momentum around key priorities, including addressing female genital schistosomiasis (FGS) and achieving equity in the ongoing negotiations around the Pandemic Accord.
Advocating for female genital schistosomiasis as essential to women’s health
FGS affects around 56 million women and girls in Sub-Saharan Africa, leaving them much more vulnerable to HIV, human papillomavirus (HPV) and serious sexual and reproductive health (SRH) complications. Despite its devastating impact, FGS remains largely ignored and marginalised as an urgent women’s health issue. Through our work on the ground, we see a critical need to integrate FGS information, diagnosis and treatment into both HIV and SRH services. Global attention on this issue is long overdue.
Encouragingly, at this year’s World Health Summit, FGS finally received the recognition and investment it deserves. During a keynote address on investing women’s health, Dr. Victoria Gamba who works with our partner organisation LVCT Health, highlighted that FGS disproportionately affects women and girls who are already marginalised and vulnerable, and lack access to clean water and good hygiene and sanitation facilities. She called for increased funding for integrated FGS testing and treatment. This was followed by a historic announcement from Svenja Schulze of the German Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), who launched a new investment initiative “From Neglect to Action”, focusing on addressing FGS in Malawi. This is the first global investment on FGS!
Frontline AIDS, as co-chair of the FGS Integration Group (FIG), also participated in a side event which focused on the actions we need to ensure FGS is integrated into broader SRH health services. The World Health Summit in 2024 became a landmark moment for women’s health in Africa and a major step forward ending this neglected condition.
Achieving equity on the Pandemic Accord
Our experience in the HIV response has shown that inequitable access to medical products leads to devastating outcomes in low- and middle-income countries, where pharmaceutical profits are often prioritised over lives. The same failures in access to healthcare have been repeated with COVID-19 and more recently with MPOX, highlighting the urgent need to reform if we are to achieve equity in the global health system.
These calls for equity echoed throughout the WHS. Dr. Raji Tajudeen, Deputy Director of Africa CDC, observed that Africa is repeatedly been left at the back of the queue for vaccine distribution. Former Prime Minister of New Zealand, Helen Clark, emphasised that these challenges in inequitable access to treatment and medications are also being played out in the Pandemic Accord negotiations.
Frontline AIDS has been closely following these negotiations over the past few years, and it was clear from discussions at the WHS that Global North countries continue to defend the pharmaceutical status quo, particularly around vaccine development and distribution, while the Global South pushes for reform. This impasse risks further delaying the accord negotiations and threatens to squander a vital opportunity to strengthen the global health system ahead of future pandemics, which we know are inevitable.