Sandra Gallina, Director General at Directorate-General Sante (DG SANTE), European Commission, explains how the new EU Global Health Strategy steps up the EU’s role to deliver better health
Since the dawn of a new decade, the world has faced unprecedented challenges. What the past three years have shown us most is that promoting and protecting global health is no longer optional. It has become essential if we are to safeguard the well-being of our citizens and ensure our social and economic stability.
The COVID-19 pandemic, the war in Ukraine, and the climate crisis have undermined decades of progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals, including those related to health.
The European Union has quickly drawn lessons from the COVID crisis and has already shown that it is capable of moving with the times by responding to current and future threats that may come our way. In September 2020, in her State of the Union speech, President Von der Leyen called for the creation of a European Health Union.
Since that day, its building blocks began to slot into place in the form of stronger and adapted health agencies like the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) and the European Medicines Agency (EMA), and through more impactful legislation like the Cross Border Health Threat Regulation. Its ambition is very simple: making sure we avoid, in the future, the havoc that COVID-19 brought to Europe and our world.
Such crises remind us that our greatest challenges are common ones and can only be overcome together. Working alone simply leads us into blind alleys. We now have the chance to reset and refocus our engagement in global health as the sands of geopolitical forever shift.
“The world must act as one to deliver on our global health goals. To this end, the European Union stands ready to play a leading role in this effort through a new EU Global Health Strategy.”
A new EU Global Health Strategy
The world must act as one to deliver on our global health goals. To this end, the European Union stands ready to play a leading role in this effort through a new EU Global Health Strategy.
This Strategy will elevate global health to a new level, reaching for the highest health standards, founded on solidarity, equity, and respect for human rights.
This will require the EU and its global partners to do their fair share in strengthening health systems and improving the health of everyone across the globe. This includes delivering universal health coverage, ensuring equitable access to healthcare, maximising the potential of digitalisation, and addressing the workforce challenge. We must do this taking particular care of the health of women, girls, and vulnerable groups – and addressing the strong links between health and the environment, food security, climate, and other important policies.
We need to achieve a giant leap in how we prepare for, and respond to, health threats. Building on the EU’s success in delivering safe and effective vaccines during the pandemic, but also learning from hard lessons, we must consider a permanent platform that embodies vaccine equity and affordable access to countermeasures. We must build a global surveillance network that fully embodies One Health principles backed by robust international rules, including a legally binding pandemic agreement.
To realise these goals, we must shape a new and effective global health order that helps us to respond collectively to health threats and delivers better health for all. It is indispensable to have an effective and accountable WHO at its core – but we must equally fill the gaps in global governance, with a permanent link between global health and finance efforts, sustained attention by top political leadership, and effective, appropriate funding. And we must harness the impetus of global health stakeholders and private initiatives to advance common objectives – fighting duplication and ensuring coherence of action in the multilateral health system.
Deliver better heath for all in a changing world
This Global Health Strategy will build on the joint efforts of EU institutions and Member States in dealing with COVID-19 and get the most from its immense potential to affect real and positive change. We will speak with one single and strong voice, delivering effective results that will be monitored with the help of stakeholders.
A plan is place, a course is charted. It is now time to put into action our goals and ambitions – we know what we need to do. We look forward to working with our Member States and stakeholders to turn the promise of a new EU Global Health Strategy into reality and deliver better heath for all in a changing world.
