Expert Preparatory Roundtable: Health

The 24 March expert preparatory roundtable on health governance was co-organized with the UN University International Institute for Global Health (UNU-IIGH, Malaysia), the African Centre for Global Health and Social Transformation (ACHEST), with support from UN Foundation and Global Challenges Foundation.

It was one of a series of expert roundtables that the Secretariat is hosting to prepare framing inputs for the HLAB. Our Common Agenda refers to the mechanisms that support improvements in human health outcomes as global public goods. The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed fault lines in the global health governance architecture. Coordinated collective action on issues relating to public health – ranging from Research and Development funding to vaccine provision, basic universal healthcare to health technologies, Neglected Tropical Diseases to non-communicable diseases, and social determinants of health – are still lacking. These governance gaps generate negative outcomes for individuals and for communities, and drive mistrust in governments and public institutions at the national and international levels.

Our Common Agenda has put forward several possible initiatives to strengthen global health governance architecture, such as a global vaccination plan that will address coordination, capacity, and production gaps; greater autonomy and funding for the World Health Organization and scaling up the projects like the ACT-Accelerator, which aims at faster development, production, and access to health technologies. The report endorses the recommendations put forward by the Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response, many of which aim at transforming or creating new mechanisms we might consider health global public goods. The Independent Panel has, for example, recommended the establishment of a Global Health Threats Council, a Pandemic Framework Convention, International Pandemic Financing Facility, strengthening national pandemic preparedness and response capacities, and stronger regional capacities for manufacturing, regulation, and procurement of needed tools for equitable and effective access to vaccines, therapeutics, diagnostics, and essential supplies.

The event was co-chaired by Dr David Passarelli (UNU-CPR) and Professor Obijiofor Aginam (UNU-IIGH).