On Wednesday 30 November the European Commission adopted a new EU strategy on global health to improve global health security and ensure better health for all in a changing world (EUROPE 13052/23).
“Covid-19 is of course the backdrop and the warning signal” for this strategy, Commissioner for Health Stella Kyriakides told the media.
Thus, health is no longer just “a matter of pharma and doctors”, but a “geopolitical issue”, stressed EU High Representative Josep Borrell. According to him, it is necessary to have an approach “in which international cooperation, security aspects and the need to guarantee our open strategic autonomy are a reality”.
With this strategy, the EU intends to “strengthen its leadership role and reaffirm its responsibility in addressing major global challenges and health inequalities”. The strategy aims to regain lost ground in achieving the universal health-related targets in the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals.
In concrete terms, the Commission is putting forward three priorities. The first is better health and well-being, including regaining lost ground on universal health in the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals by promoting the drivers of good health, addressing the root causes of ill health, and giving special attention to women, girls and people in vulnerable situations.
The Commission also wants to advance universal health coverage with more equitable primary health care systems and better capacity to respond to emergency health needs, but also by harnessing digitalisation and research and addressing workforce imbalances.
Finally, it calls for combatting threats to health, including pandemics, with new international rules and strengthened capacities for surveillance, prevention and detection of threats, a permanent platform for vaccine development and access, the ‘One Health’ approach and the containment of antimicrobial resistance (AMR). “The silent pandemic of AMR resistance could be next”, Kyriakides said.
The strategy also stresses the importance of addressing the major drivers of ill health, including climate change and environmental degradation, food security, conflict and other humanitarian crises.
It also promotes a new approach to global cooperation and partnerships. This includes having a “stronger, more effective, more accountable and sustainably funded World Health Organization (WHO) at the heart of the multilateral system”. Ms Kyriakides called for the EU to be at the WTO table: “This should start with official observer status and continue with full membership”.
The European Commission also advocates for unduplicated global governance and strong political attention to health, health sovereignty with expanded international partnerships based on co-ownership and co-responsibility under the Global Gateway, and more effective financing by promoting innovative financing, joint financing mechanisms and co-investment, including with the private sector.
According to Development Commissioner Jutta Urpilainen, the Neighbourhood, Development and International Cooperation Instrument (NDICI) will be brought into play. “This will include the human development window under EFSD+, which will generate increased investment from the private sector”, the Commissioner added. She said the EU will also promote new methods of financing at global level, “creating fiscal space for health system reforms in partner countries”.
Ms Kyriakides announced that, as it had already done with the US Department of Health, the EU was negotiating cooperation partnerships with South Korea and Japan and would sign a cooperation agreement with the WHO in the coming weeks.
To achieve the objectives of the strategy, the Commission calls for new European governance to provide leadership, mobilising all internal and external policies for global health, using Team Europe’s “single, powerful” voice, strengthening coordination with Member States by linking actions and funds to health priorities, and monitoring the implementation of the strategy.
See the strategy: https://aeur.eu/f/4ds (Original version in French by Camille-Cerise Gessant)