France’s Global Health Ambassador, Anne Claire Amprou.

France’s Ambassador for Global Health, Dr Anne-Claire Amprou, is joining the leadership of the World Health Organization (WHO) body negotiating the missing piece of the Pandemic Agreement at a crucial moment.

Amprou co-chaired the last stage of Pandemic Agreement talks, which eventually found consensus. However, consensus has eluded WHO member states on the pathogen access and benefit-sharing (PABS) annex, which prevents the agreement’s implementation.

Since July 2025, IGWG members have been unable to agree on how to share information on dangerous pathogens, and any medical products developed from that knowledge.

Brazil’s Ambassador Tovar Da Silva Nunes, co-chair of the Intergovernmental Working Group (IGWG) negotiating PABS, told the opening of its ninth formal meeting on Monday that Amprou would be formally presented for consideration as his co-chair on Tuesday.

Amprou represents France at the Pandemic Fund and Global Fund, and chairs the Unitaid board. She coordinated the French response to COVID-19 in 2021 and is a former French Deputy Director General for Health.

Welcoming Amprou to IGWG, WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told the IGWG opening that there is “strong political support” for the annex to be completed

Dr Tedros addresses the opening of IGWG 9.

“Just a few weeks ago, the United Nations General Assembly adopted its Political Declaration on pandemic prevention, preparedness and response. Heads of state and government welcomed the Pandemic Agreement and called for the PABS negotiations to be concluded,” said Tedros.

“But ultimately, the reason for finishing this work is not legal or procedural. It is about protecting people. Because a pathogen threat anywhere can become a threat everywhere – to the people of every country.

He added: “You do not need to design a perfect system for all time. You need to agree on a system that works, that delivers equity, and that can be strengthened as we learn from experience,” said Tedros.

He also urged negotiators to negotiate “with the intention and expectation of concluding”, distinguish between “what is essential and what is desirable”, and “keep public health as your North Star”.

“The test of this Annex is whether it will help the world respond faster and more equitably when the next pandemic threat emerges,” said Tedros.

Algeria, representing the Africa Group, at IGWG 9

Algeria, representing the Africa Group, and Egypt, Somalia and Sudan – part of the East Mediterranean Group – reasserted its core position: “Access and benefit sharing are two inseparable pillars on an equal footing. Neither can be implemented at the expense of the other.”

Algeria also called for the Africa Group’s “federated model”, proposed two IGWG sessions ago, to be discussed at this session. 

According to this model, pathogen materials and data always stay in the hands of countries or regions, and manufacturers have to accept a data access agreement (DAA) with the country or regional node and sign a benefit-sharing contract with the WHO to gain access to this information.

“We firmly believe that a system of access by design and benefit by convenience will not earn the trust of those who provide the materials,” Algeria concluded.

Pakistan, for EMRO, and India, for Southeast Asia, also asserted that access and benefit sharing need to be on an equal footing.

“We understand that there is a viewpoint that manufacturers may, in any event, obtain pathogens as sequence information. Our region sees this differently,” said Pakistan.

“Availability somewhere is not the same as timely, lawful, transparent, and traceable access under an agreed international framework. And confidence in the system depends on that traceability. Countries will share rapidly and confidently when they can see what comes back.”

‘No charity’

Indonesia, speaking for the cross-regional Group for Equity, said that “no country wants its response to the next pandemics to depend on charity”. “Multilateralism earns its keep when its outcome changes things substantially, and ensures that no one is left behind. That is the standard by which the PAPS annex will be judged,” said Indonesia. 

“There is no perfect model, but we are not waiting for one. There are choices on the table that clearly bring us closer to equity, greater self-reliance, and health systems that can better withstand future pandemics.”

Noting that “a number of issues still require significant further discussions”, the European Union proposed a variety of formats: formal discussions, informal discussions led by co-facilitators, and “opportunities for delegations to meet in smaller groups and for different groups of delegations to meet bilaterally”. 

Several non-state actors also addressed the meeting, including the International Federat Pharmaceutical Manufacturers & Associations (IFPMA), which urged member states to “enable companies to access the pathogen materials and information needed to begin R&D quickly, with clear, workable, and predictable conditions for participation”.

“As discussions advance across these interconnected elements, we encourage member states to assess them against a simple test: will these arrangements encourage the broad participation needed for PABS to work effectively and rapidly when the next pandemic threat emerges?”

The new generic version of lenacapavir is expected to cost $40 for the two annual injections.a

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved the first generic version of lenacapavir, the highly effective twice-yearly injection to prevent HIV, developed by Dr Reddy’s Laboratories based in India.

Dr Reddy’s was one of six pharmaceutical manufacturers that was granted a non-exclusive, royalty-free voluntary licensing agreement from Gilead, which developed lenacapavir.

The agreement, signed in October 2024, limits the sale of the generics to 120 high-incidence, resource-limited countries.

The generics – projected to cost $40 a year for the two injections – are expected to reach countries by the end of this year. Zambia is likely to be one of the first to get supplies. 

Dr Reddy’s Deepak Sapra described the approval as “a moment of immense pride” for the company.

“Developing and manufacturing a complex long-acting injectable like lenacapavir at an affordable price required strong scientific capabilities, manufacturing expertise and the ability to produce at scale,” added Sapra. 

Dr Reddy received “financial, technical, and regulatory support” from Unitaid, Wits RHI, and the Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI) to accelerate the development of the generic. The FDA approval comes only 16 months after Gilead’s product was approved. 

“Unitaid’s early risk-taking is helping shorten the time between a scientific breakthrough and real access in countries,” said Dr. Philippe Duneton, Unitaid executive director. 

“Getting a generic approved just 16 months after the originator approval for prevention, rather than a decade later, shows what’s possible when we prioritize access from the start. This should be the new standard for global health,” said CHAI CEO Dr Neil Buddy Shah.

“For someone at risk of HIV, taking a pill every day to prevent a disease they don’t have is a hard thing to ask. Two injections a year, of a product that is almost 100% effective at preventing HIV, changes that entirely,” added Shah. 

“More than 125,000 people in Africa have already started on lenacapavir, and today’s approval brings us closer to making it available to millions more for just $40 a year.”

However, Wits RHI’s Professor Saiqa Mullick warned that an affordable generic is not enough: “Countries need health systems that are ready to deliver new prevention options, providers who are confident in offering them, and communities that are engaged as partners in their introduction and scale-up. Bringing these elements together will be critical to ensuring equitable access and impact.”

“Unitaid, Wits RHI, and CHAI are working with governments, communities, the Global Fund, the US Bureau of Global Health Security and Diplomacy (GHSD), the Gates Foundation, and other partners to turn approval into access on the ground, from supporting country introduction and community engagement to generating real-world evidence to inform how lenacapavir can best reach diverse and underserved populations,” the three groups noted in a media release on Monday.

Image Credits: @Unitaid.

‘MAHA Mom’ Jayme Franklin (left) witnesses US President Donald Trump change childhood vaccines via an executive order in August, with the enthusiastic backing of US Health Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr (right).

Cuts to Medicaid, the health services for low-income Americans, and fewer childhood immunisations – alongside persistent insinuations that vaccines are unsafe – are the most significant health policy changes made by the Trump administration since January 2025.

They have been accompanied by reduced food support for low-income families, purges of scientists, and slashed research budgets. 

The cumulative impact of these policies will take decades to measure, but the early damage can already be measured in rising infectious diseases and worsening maternal health.

The Trump administration projects it will spend $900 billion less on Medicaid between 2025 and 2034 – largely by making it harder for people to qualify. By its own accounting, 10.5 million people will lose or face reduced health benefits, largely to offset Trump tax cuts that benefit wealthier Americans most. 

Maternal care, rural health care and healthcare for Black and Hispanic communities are expected to be worst affected.

The Health and Human Services (HHS) budget has been cut by 12.5% this financial year (which started on 1 October), with more cuts for research grants and health services expected.

Undermining vaccines

HHS Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr has been laser-focused on reshaping federal vaccine policy since assuming office in late February 2025. The nation’s most senior health official has led a decades-long crusade against vaccinations – the single health intervention that has saved by far the most lives in the history of humankind.

Twenty-six years ago, the United States had eliminated measles. Today, it faces its biggest outbreak in decades, with over 4,800 cases this year alone. Whooping cough cases have also surged in the past two years. 

Vaccines exist for both, and experts say waning levels of immunisation have driven the outbreaks – with 96% of measles cases in those who are unvaccinated.

Instead of urging immunisation in the face of rising vaccine-preventable diseases, Kennedy has doubled down on his anti-vaccine stance. 

His most recent move was to open a new vaccine injury research center at the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) despite the country already having a sophisticated vaccine surveillance system. HHS also plans to provide financial incentives to doctors for reporting vaccine injuries.

In a September address to Children’s Health Defense (CHD), the anti-vaccine non-profit he founded, Kennedy focused on the harms of vaccines and repeated the disproven theory that they are linked to autism.

COVID-19 vaccines were Kennedy’s priority upon assuming office. Opposition to these vaccines was what cemented a bond between the Kennedy anti-vaxxers, who believed mRNA vaccines were harmful, and the Trump libertarians who did not want to be forced to be vaccinated or masked during the pandemic.

By May 2025, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had limited COVID-19 vaccine recommendations to people over 65 and those aged 12 and over with underlying conditions. 

Firing vaccine experts

The following month, Kennedy axed all the country’s vaccine advisers, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP). 

After stacking ACIP with vaccine-sceptics, he let them lose on the childhood vaccination schedule. They declared vaccines for hepatitis A, hepatitis B, meningitis, rotavirus, influenza, and COVID-19 are no longer “routine”. Patients and their doctors should have “shared clinical decision-making” about whether to have them.

Professional health groups and 14 states have challenged both the dismissal of ACIP and the changes to the childhood immunisation schedule in separate court challenges. 

After a judge ruled HHS overreach on the ACIP firings (the state is appealing), Kennedy enlisted Trump’s help. 

In August this year, the US president issued an executive order on vaccines that reduced childhood vaccines from 18 to 11, and divided the three-in-one measles, mumps, rubella (MMR) vaccine into separate shots. It is extraordinary for a US president to issue a decree on immunisation outside of a pandemic.

Kennedy also cancelled $500 million in research funding into mRNA vaccines by the US Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) – claiming “mRNA technology poses more risks than benefits for these respiratory viruses”.

“Eugenics is not a word I use lightly. Yet elements of that thinking are echoed in policies that promote natural infection over prevention provided by vaccines; confound health equity with diversity-focused hiring practices, and pit personal choice against community,” wrote Dr Demetre Daskalakis, former director of the US CDC’s National Center for Immunizations and Respiratory Diseases.

Purging scientists

Dr Susan Monarez, former CDC director

Daskalakis is one of at least 25 senior health leaders who have been fired, resigned or reassigned across the country’s health and scientific bodies under this Trump administration. Around 10,000 HHS staff have also lost their jobs in “cost-cutting”.

The CDC, charged with preventing and controlling disease, injury, and disability, has been worst affected. The Senate-confirmed CDC director, Dr Susan Monarez,, was fired in August 2025 for refusing to rubber-stamp decisions taken by Kennedy’s political appointees.

After being fired, Monarez told the Senate that Kennedy had directed her to “commit in advance to approving every ACIP recommendation regardless of the scientific evidence” and to “dismiss career officials responsible for vaccine policy, without cause”.

Daskalakis and three other top CDC officials resigned in protest after Monarez was fired. Five other CDC directors were reassigned last year, and earlier this year, the CDC’s acting director and deputy director left the agency.

Nine top NIH officials have also been forced out, including the directors of five NIH institutes.

In May, FDA Commissioner Marty Makary was fired, and Tracy Beth Høeg, who took over as acting head, was removed within weeks.

In April, the White House also fired all 24 members of the National Science Board (NSB), the group that advises the National Science Foundation (NSF), without explanation.

“This is the latest stupid move made by a president who continues to harm science and American innovation,” said Representative Zoe Lofgren, the Democratic ranking member of the House Science, Space, and Technology committee. “Will the president fill the NSB with MAGA loyalists who won’t stand up to him as he hands over our leadership in science to our adversaries?”

Worsening maternal health 

The drop in OB-GYNs in Idaho (JAMA).

The US has the highest maternal mortality rate among high-income countries. Since the federal law allowing access to abortion, Roe v Wade, was overturned, Trump loyalists have tightened abortion access in several states to such an extent that it is hard for doctors to intervene when women are miscarrying.

This has had a chilling effect on maternal health. While 12 of the most restrictive states have seen a small drop in their  number of obstetrician-gynaecologists, some state effects have been severe.

In Idaho, for example, 35% of ob-gyns have left or stopped practising since that state banned abortion. Half of Idaho’s counties no longer have an obstetrician, and in the southeastern corner of the state, there is one obstetrician for 120,000 people, according to a New York Times report.

Infant mortality is generally higher in states with restrictive access to abortion, with Alabama and Mississippi recording the highest deaths and California the lowest, according to a study published in JAMA. 

The 2025 report of March of Dimes, a US non-profit advocating for mothers and newborns, describes the country’s maternal and infant health system as “dangerously stalled”.

The report notes an increase in preterm births among Black mothers and a decline in pregnant women seeking care in their first trimester.

Measles rise as vaccinations fall

A doctor examines a child with measles

There have been 43 new measles outbreaks in 2026, with 4,852 recorded cases by 30 October, according to the US CDC. This is more than double the 2025 caseload.

This is “by far the highest total in 35 years”, according to the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP) based at the University of Minnesota.

“The new data mark the 12th straight week of triple-digit increases nationwide,” CIDRAP noted. “The United States will very likely lose its measles elimination status – which it gained in 2000 – in the coming months.”

The outbreaks are being driven by a drop in vaccinations to below the 95% needed to maintain community immunity.

Johns Hopkins reports declining vaccination rates in kindergarten children. During the 2024-25 school year, coverage for measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) was just 92.5%.

The diphtheria, tetanus, and pertussis (DTaP) vaccination rate also decreased from 92.3% in 2023-24 to 92.1% in 2024-25. Even polio vaccination coverage dropped from 92.7% to 92.5%

Declining rates of DTaP and MMR vaccination rates in kindergarten children (Johns Hopkins).

Worsening health in the US

Life expectancy in the US is already considerably lower than in most high-income countries, and its “avoidable deaths” are increasing, according to a 2025 report in The Lancet.

Reduced access to Medicaid and the elimination of certain childhood vaccinations, along with vaccine misinformation, are slow-burn activities likely to worsen the health of US citizens. 

Their full impact will only become evident years down the line, as well as the axing of thousands of health professionals and the elevation of political appointees over career scientists.

The US is an outlier in the developed world as it does not offer universal health coverage. Over two-thirds of US citizens rely on private health insurance and around 10% have no health coverage. 

The popularity of Kennedy’s “Make America Healthy Again” movement indicates that millions of Americans are concerned about worsening health. 

But Kennedy’s approach so far has undermined public health measures rather than living up to his campaign promise to address the drivers of poor health, particularly the junk food industry that is a major cause of obesity and cardiovascular disease.

Image Credits: JAMA, Johns Hopkins.

The Global Health Campus in Geneva, HQ of the Global Fund, where Dybul must navigate funding shortfalls and structural reform.
The Global Health Campus in Geneva, shared by Gavi and the Global Fund. Incoming Executive Director Mark Dybul argues the real priority is country-level alignment, not consolidation.

Returning to lead the Global Fund, Mark Dybul argues that the future of global health lies with domestic health systems, not agency mergers in Geneva. Evoking the founding ambition of the early 2000s, the incoming executive director explains how the Accra Reset and US bilateral aid can align under unified national plans – and how his active ties to Washington can help navigate political fragmentation.

Health Policy Watch: You’re stepping back into the Global Fund at a critical moment for multilateral health. What’s different about this term compared to your first stint starting in 2013?

Mark Dybul: The Fund is in a remarkably strong position – I would say the strongest position it’s ever been in. Peter [Sands] deserves a lot of praise and credit for leading the Fund over the last nine years with the full partnership of the board and the secretariat, built on the depth and breadth of cross-sector partnership that is central to the next phase of global health.

Mark Dybul speaking during the interview.
Mark Dybul speaking during the interview.

What’s really different is the landscape. It has changed radically from the last time I was executive director. I’ve been part of that shifting landscape for the last nine years from my position at Georgetown [University], working closely with countries and communities as they’ve already begun to prepare for transitions. This is not new; it’s happening in an accelerated way, but it’s been moving.

It reminds me a little bit of 2000, but in a totally different way. In 2000, there was enormous energy, excitement, lots of new resources, lots of new institutions.

Today is more about asking: “Where are we, and where are countries today?” This is something I don’t think gets enough emphasis: countries are in a completely different position than they were 25 years ago. Their technical capacity, their desire for ownership and sovereignty within a supportive international system of solidarity, and their financial capacity, have been transformed. GDPs in countries have grown from single-digit billions to triple-digit billions, some growing to trillions. While external financing is also facing a very different climate, that shift reflects the progress countries have made.

HPW: You’ve argued that global health aid must end dependencies and shift toward national sovereignty – a core pillar of the Accra Reset, which calls for a five- to 10-year wind-down of duplicative functions. What does that transition look like for the Global Fund under your leadership?

Dybul: That will ultimately be determined by the board within the international architecture, but people are jumping straight to that one piece of the Accra Reset. The other components are actually pivotal to making that happen. Those other pieces are supporting countries for successful transitions – not just from external financing, but to a new approach that some countries are in a position to adopt.

That includes a reduction in external financing, which they want, but it’s going to take time; it has to be careful, and it has to be flexible and responsive because countries will go in different directions. There are some countries that will take much longer, some that are in a crisis state, and some that could enter a crisis state, so there’s no one pathway here.

I think the most critical parts are successful, well-planned, and executed transitions where possible, which frees up capital for countries that will take longer. 60% to 80% of current bilateral and multilateral budgets go to countries that are in a very strong position to be able to transition over time, which is something they very much want to do.

On the architecture piece: I used to spend a lot more time on this. Right now, to me, the focus – and again, this is what the Accra Reset says – is on the countries and the communities to best support them to achieve better health outcomes over the coming years, while they decrease external financing requirements because of their capacity to increase domestic financing.

If we take that perspective, then what countries want and need from the international system will begin to emerge. That’s why in the Accra Reset it says five to 10 years, because we don’t know yet what that looks like, and it will evolve – and I won’t be executive director when that happens.

Country impact over Geneva-centered consolidation

As debates continue over consolidating global health agencies in Geneva, incoming leadership argues that the real test is operational - managing the convergence of vaccines and treatments while balancing Asian procurement scale with calls for regional manufacturing.
As debates continue over consolidating global health agencies in Geneva, incoming leadership argues that the real test is operational – managing the convergence of vaccines and treatments while balancing Asian procurement scale with calls for regional manufacturing.

HPW: On that outcome perspective – in malaria, TB, and looking ahead to the HIV pipeline – there is an increasing convergence of vaccine and therapeutic options. Should Gavi and the Global Fund work closer together or even merge?

Dybul: I’ve always believed that Gavi and the Global Fund should work more closely together. When I was executive director the last time, we did joint trips together, we worked on plans together. It’s been very exciting to see Peter’s leadership with Sania [Nishtar] putting together a task force where they actually work closely together, especially on malaria right now because we have a malaria vaccine and malaria treatment. From what I’ve seen from the outside, there’s been tremendous partnership. All of us coming together to support countries and communities is the path to that transition, and it will lead to a natural architecture change.

I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about mergers and acquisitions, because then the focus is in Geneva, New York, or Copenhagen. The focus needs to be in the country and how we all work together to support them. Again, the Board sets the direction and the vision, and we execute. But there’s tremendous opportunity to work together to support countries in a stronger way.

HPW: The Global Fund leverages massive scale for rock-bottom prices, predominantly from Asia. With Africa CDC pushing for regional manufacturing sovereignty, is the Fund prepared to pay a price premium for African-made diagnostics and therapeutics?

Dybul: That will require extensive board discussions, but price supplements are only one approach. This is something that we started when I was there, and Peter and the secretariat have really built on: how you actually score things in procurement.

For example, initially when I came in, it was only on cost of goods, and not on shipping costs or on-time and full delivery. Once you start building those in, you can actually start tilting towards more regional and local production because those costs were invisible before in costing decisions. In fact, there was a significant shift towards local manufacture of bed nets and things that could be done locally.

At the same time, we have to recall that two of the best antiretroviral producers in the world were in Africa, and both failed because they didn’t have access to markets. These are longer-term conversations that the Board has to lead, but technology and pooled mechanisms give us opportunities that could be a win-win for everyone, especially by improving demand forecasting.

Managing the risks of new tech philanthropy

Two female health extension workers in white lab coats and headwraps administer a finger-prick blood test to an elderly man seated across a table during an outdoor community health clinic in Nigeria.
Amid an influx of AI philanthropy, the Global Fund’s incoming leadership insists tech investments must align with sovereign health plans and empower community-led healthcare delivery.

HPW: Global health is seeing an influx of AI philanthropy, raising alarms over data extraction and private-sector priorities. How will the Global Fund channel this tech wave without compromising national data sovereignty?

Mark Dybul is an experienced Global health expert (2016).
Mark Dybul is appointed Executive Director of the Global Fund.

Dybul: Sovereignty is not just financing; it’s also data sovereignty, and planning and execution sovereignty. I’ve had the privilege of working with some of these tech groups in my life and have grants from some of them, so I know them and know how they function.

They are deeply committed, very well-intentioned people, and it’ll be a process of working together. Their goal is to get the greatest impact, and that is going to require deep engagement of countries and communities.

By working together and understanding the complexities country by country – because one size does not fit all – I think this can be a tremendous opportunity for the future, especially as public financing is likely to continue to decrease over time.

As you point out, there are risks, and the risks have to be managed. It comes back to something unique about the Global Fund: the strength of the partnership, the fact that foundations and private sector actors are at the table with a voting seat on the Board. I want to emphasise that: the money is not coming directly from the tech companies; they don’t own the data that they put money in for. I worry less about data sovereignty because these are not the tech companies coming in; these are tech companies giving funds through other mechanisms. But there are issues about planning, execution, and flexibility that need to be worked out.

And I really want to keep emphasising: when I say countries, it’s communities too. Governments are hugely important, but so are communities and non-governmental organisations; they deliver enormous amounts of healthcare – in some countries, 40% of healthcare delivery is outside the public sector.

HPW: Speaking of communities – in many transitioning countries, domestic governments are openly hostile to funding harm reduction or LGBTQ+ programmes. If co-financing takes over and drops key populations, will the Global Fund continue directly financing civil society outside government channels?

Dybul: These are board decisions, not secretariat decisions. Having said that, this is not the first time we’ve faced this. When I was executive director before, we worked with UNAIDS in Latin America to help governments understand that non-governmental entities and communities are integral to their health systems.

We ran numbers showing finance ministries that an uncontrolled epidemic among key populations would destroy their national budgets and fiscal sovereignty. In response, several countries actually changed laws so governments could legally transfer state funding to civil society groups delivering these frontline services. It is a risk, and we have to pay very careful attention to it.

There are other potential funding sources – philanthropies that are now focusing on this. I’ve spent a fair amount of time over the last five years working with philanthropies to understand this risk, and that these populations have to be involved and protected, or you will not control your epidemics, which is the core goal of the Global Fund. It’s a complex dynamic, but it’s something that’s very front and centre in my mind, and I know it’s front and centre in the board’s mind and across delegations.

Aligning US bilateralism with country sovereignty

The United States Capitol Building in Washington, DC, with a clear blue sky.
Pointing to his active, bipartisan engagement with Congress and the administration, Dybul argues that strong US bilateral assistance and Global Fund financing can align – provided all partners subordinate their funding to sovereign, country-led health plans.

HPW: Despite your strong bipartisan ties in Washington, the current political climate favours bilateral deals over multilateral pooling. How do you satisfy Washington’s demands without alienating the rest of the Board?

Dybul: It comes back to working collaboratively, humbly, and everyone aligning under national plans. That’s actually what the current people in the [US] State Department are calling for: that we all align under national plans, and that’s what the countries want.

All working together, as long as everyone’s aligned with that national plan, with that national budget, with the reporting requirements – it can be bilateral, it can be multilateral, it can be whatever which way you want. There might be disagreements, but you’ll have to work that out in the country, with the country, which will be radically different from place to place.

I’m very optimistic. I have spent a lot of time in a bipartisan way working with multiple administrations and multiple Congresses, and I’m very active with Congress and the administration right now.

2000 gave this great opportunity because of huge amounts of money; reductions in resources can lead to innovation and a whole new way of doing things, including a new way to involve communities and non-governmental organisations. Think of all the things people said were impossible in 2000, and nearly all of them have been achieved!

As we’re looking forward, rather than saying, “This is going to be so difficult, it’s going to be impossible,” why don’t we start looking as we did then: “Well yeah, true, but what are the opportunities? How do we make it work? And how do we solve problems?” If everyone comes together with a solution-minded approach, these are very solvable problems.

Image Credits: Global Fund/Vincent Becker, HPW/Felix Sassmannshausen, Elements Interactive via Pexels, mk_photoz via Pexels, Georgetown University, Ramaz Bluashvili via Pexels.

Speakers at the launch of the Independent Panel’s report on mpox, “Hiding in Plain Sight”.

The World Health Organization (WHO) declared mpox a public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC), its highest alarm level, twice within two years, in 2022 and 2024.

But “preventable health emergencies are a sign of failure”, said Helen Clark, co-chair of the Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response. “They happen when community health care is neglected, signals are missed, and pathogens are allowed to spread beyond their original habitats.

The mpox virus had been circulating for over 50 years, causing sporadic outbreaks in poor West African communities – but neglect enabled it to evolve into a global public health risk affecting 82 countries, according to a new report by the Independent Panel published on Friday.

“Mpox was not new at all. It was actually known for decades, yet had received little attention because it was affecting neglected communities in faraway regions in Central and West Africa,” report author Dr Els Torreele told a media briefing on Friday.

“Decades of neglect allowed the virus to mutate into more easily transmissible variants, in particular, transmissible among humans through sexual contact, and spread outside of the original habitat, leading to this first [WHO] public health emergency declaration.”

Yet even after the 2022 PHEI declaration, neglect continued in places where it was first endemic. Vaccines were rolled out in wealthier affected countries, yet they were not available in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the epicentre.

An adult infected with mpox in DRC.

By 2023, “there were signals that the numbers of cases were increasing, that the patterns of transmission were changing, that actually a new variant had arisen that also was transmittable through sexual contacts,” Torreele said. “A lot of alarm bells were ringing, but nobody was really listening until August 2024.”

That was when the WHO and Africa CDC declared mpox a public health emergency for the second time, mobilising resources to address it.

The recent media hype about one potential case of plague in Russia ignored the fact that the plague virus “is circulating in animal reservoirs in many different countries with sporadic spillovers and infection of humans, including in countries of known fragility”, said Torreele.

“We need to shift from repeatedly responding to crises to sustained investment in preparedness before they occur,” Clark told the briefing.

“Instead of scrambling to respond, how could we stop outbreaks where and when they occur? How could we prevent them?” she asked. “Once a public health emergency is declared, it means we’re already acting too late for so many people.”

Community readiness

A health worker takes a sample from a person suspected of having mpox. There are still no rapid diagnostic tests for mpox.

Clark and Torreele argue that investment in communities and primary healthcare are the best ways to prevent outbreaks from becoming public health emergencies.

“One answer is to stop treating communities as beneficiaries in a crisis, and instead invest in them as ongoing partners who can help detect and report risks to their communities,” urged Clark.

“It’s often said that outbreaks begin and end in communities, yet so rarely have we invested as though we believe that, and we must ask: What other diseases are we neglecting in plain sight?”

Torreele called for immediate investment in country-led research into neglected diseases, “looking at the pathogens that cause them, and their habitats, and design context-relevant control measures, including those that can really be adopted at community level, that actually can help us avoid further outbreaks becoming epidemics”.

She described the declaration of a health emergency as “a failure” to stop an outbreak when and where it occurs. 

“Of course, it remains important to call out when an outbreak is out of control. But it is wasteful and expensive to do it so late.”

“We have to learn the lesson that we should not treat communities as just consumers of outcomes of our health interventions, but people who can really help us produce better outcomes and support health intelligence that can help us manage these disease outbreaks,” said Aggrey Aluso, executive director of Resilience Action Network Africa (RANA).

Ebola Bundibugyo outbreak

Aluso said that, like mpox, detection of the Ebola Bundibugyo outbreak in the DRC had taken too long, and “we are paying the price for that”.

Dr Marie Roseline Belizaire, WHO Africa regional director of emergency preparedness and response, outlined some of the hurdles hampering the Bundibugyo response, including diagnostic delays as samples had to be transported to labs hundreds of kilometres, gaps in staff training, fuel shortages, the lack of isolation facilities and local funding.

Referring to “invisible transmission”, Belizaire said cases needed to be detected earlier, and patients needed to be treated earlier.

“That means we need to strengthen surveillance and contact tracing.”

Independent Panel member Dr Joanne Liu noted that the cost of effective annual pandemic preparedness and response is $15 billion, but only about $2 billion had been raised annually. 

She also called for fund recipients to have stronger accountability: ‘We need to up our game on this accountability. It’s not enough to have a tracking tool. We need to have real accountability processes and mechanisms, and then we need to make sure that it gets dispersed to the frontline health workers.”

What is success?

“True mpox readiness in areas of fragility would require significantly cheaper and registered vaccines available in regional or national stockpiles, hand in hand with easy-to-use diagnostics that can differentiate it from chickenpox and measles,” said Torreele.

“Emergency response success should not just be measured by a decrease in the numbers of cases and countries affected, but the number of medical countermeasures rolled out,” she added.

“[We] should also measure success by the capacity to leave behind communities and health systems, especially in fragile areas, that are more able, more resilient, more able to monitor and respond to future outbreaks, including by having the needed diagnostic capacity and potential regional stockpiles of countermeasures close to where outbreaks might occur.”

Image Credits: WHO, Katson Maliro/ WHO.

This story was originally published by The New Humanitarian.

Overuse and inappropriate use of antimicrobials is driving bacterial, viral and parasite resistance to common drugs

Action is lagging far behind the milestone commitments of the 2024 UN High Level Declaration on Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR). But a Ministerial Meeting scheduled for 6-8 December in Abuja offers an opportunity to pick up the baton. Ahead of that, civil society gropus will convene in mid-November in Rome. 

Two years after the UN General Assembly pledged to reduce deaths from AMR 10% by 2030, the world is losing the battle against superbugs. And UN institutions vested with leading the charge against the proliferation of drug resistant pathogens are plagued by budget cuts and leadership questions. According to WHO, some 4.9 million deaths annually are somehow associated with AMR, while a 2022 Lancet study found 1.27 million deaths were a direct result of superbug resistance to antibiotic treatment. Two  studies published in July and August document the worsening trends including:  

And along with the annual death toll, scientists worry that a drug resistent pathogen could trigger the next pandemic.

Meanwhile a long-delayed ministerial meeting to follow up on the commitments made in 2024 is now finally scheduled for 6-8 December in Abuja, Nigeria. Ahead of the December event, a multistakeholder meeting including civil society, academia and private sector, as well as governments, will meet in Rome 16-18 November, during World Antimicrobial Awareness Week. 

Calling on governments to invest more in AMR 

All-age rate of deaths attributable to bacterial antimicrobial resistance by
region, 2019, as published in The Lancet’s 2022 estimate of 1.27 million such deaths annually.

A draft “Abuja Compact on Antimicrobial Resistance” prepared for the December ministerial calls on governments to recommit to the goals of the 2024 Declaration, and include more AMR spending in routine government planning and budgets. It notes that only about 10% of national AMR action plans are adequately financed.

Governments would also be asked to strengthen national surveillance of antimicrobial resistance and antimicrobial consumption – which includes antibiotics, but also anti-parasitic and anti-viral agents. 

And national systems should step up routine reporting of such data to the World Health Organization (WHO), the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Organization of Animal Health (WOAH). 

Governments are also asked to step up commitments to infection prevention; access to clean water and sanitation; improved use of diagnostics and appropriate antibiotics; as well as more investments in R&D, as well as regional manufacturing of health products. 

The 2024 AMR commitments included improved access to clean water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) critical to blunting the proliferation of drug-resistant pathogens.

Finance is another overarching theme of the draft. The Compact calls for greater involvement by finance ministries and asks the World Bank, regional development banks and other funders to consider AMR in grants and lending. That reflects a problem repeatedly raised by countries and civil society groups that many governments have adopted AMR plans without allocating enough money to carry them out.

“There’s been a lack of investment in actual National Action Plans. We need to dramatically step this up if we want to effectively combat AMR,” says Katherine Urbáez, founder and executive director of the Geneva-based Health Diplomacy Alliance, which as been a leading civil society actor on AMR.

“The December meeting is a chance to reaffirm our commitments, and accelerate action. The Rome meeting will also provide an important platform for engaging civil society, academia and the private sector.” 

Ambitious 2024 commitments but poor followup  

Plans to fight AMR have been made but not implemented. Seen here, a mapping of NAP implementation.

In the 2024 UN GA declaration, all UN member states committed to creating national action plans (NAPs) to fight AMR  but few have actually invested money into them. 

According to the latest WHO data from 2023, while 178 countries had developed and endorsed AMR NAPs, only about 11% were in fact implementing them. And anecdotal observations indicate little has improved since, says Urbaez. “We need strong engagement from Governments to participate in this Abuja meeting – and so far we haven’t seen enough of that,” Urbáez says. “Now, Abuja is the moment to focus on delivering them: tracing each commitment to measurable implementation, so that governments and partners can see where to act next and what is politically feasible.”  

Progress in Geneva – WHO AMR action plan 

The 79th session of the WHA in Geneva in May 2027 adopted an AMR action plan after over a year of delays.

This year has seen some progress already in Geneva. In May, the World Health Assembly adopted a Global Action Plan on AMR (2026-2036) after over a year of delays due to developing and developed country wrangling over language around technology transfer. 

The plan strengthens the ‘One Health’ framework for combatting AMR across human, animal, plant and environmental health sectors – setting out a road map for Health Ministries to act more assertively, with WHO support.  And it highlights member state commitments to themes of UN Declaration including prevention, equitable access to antimicrobials alongside responsible use; stronger surveillance and financial measures. See related story: 

Infection Prevention and Control Falters Post-Pandemic – Increasing AMR Risks 

Civil society advances new ‘check the box’ initiative 

On the sidelines of the World Health Assembly, and in fora since, civil society organizations have become active in tracking countries commitments to AMR plans and programmes and their follow-through – including through a new ‘Check the box’ initiative, launched by HDA.

“Check the Box is not about naming and shaming,’ Urbáez said at a WHA side event where the initiative was launched: ‘The aim is to link the dots between promise and delivery so governments and partners can identify what is missing and act.” 

(L-R) Katherine Urbáez, HDA and Ntuli Angyelile Kapologwe, East Central and Southern Africa Health Community at May ‘Check the Box’ event.

At the event, , the AMR-Health Security Equation, experts in AMR and senior government exchanged views on why high-level commitments are so often diluted as they move into national planning and delivery.

Money is a key problem, pointed out Ntuli Angyelile Kapologwe, Director General of the East Central and Southern Africa Health Community. Laboratories, pathogen surveillance and water and sanitation systems all require sustained expenditure, yet budgeting for such costs is far removed from the lofty statements issued in international meetings, “Global commitments must be translated into national measures,” he said. 

Silvia Bertagnolio, WHO.

“A national action plan means changing practices around procurement, prescribing, laboratory capacity, infection prevention, workforce planning and access to treatment,” added WHO’s Silvia Bertagnolio.

For countries sharing borders and markets, national plans therefore depend in part on regional surveillance and cooperation, other health officials pointed out. And resistant organisms not only cross those borders through trade, but they move through people, food systems, agriculture and water ecosystems, as well – while responsibility for these areas is divided across ministries and agencies. 

(L-R) Fernando Boyd Galindo, Panama; Gina Estrella Ramia, Dominican Republic; José Renán De León Cáceres, SE-COMISCA.

“Measures must have an institutional owner; that institution must have authority, staff and financing; and indicators, data sources and a reporting timetable,” said Gina Estrella Ramia, vice-minister of Environmental Health in the Dominican Republic. She stressed that finance ministries need to be involved in AMR planning from the outset. 

Reinforcing a ‘One Health’ approach

Lab technician trains in standardized and harmonized surveillance methods for antimicrobial resistance (AMR) in food animals in Southeast Asia.

Responding to that need for a holistic approach, ‘Check the Box’ tracks country follow-up on recommendations issued all four global agencies that make up the One Health Quadrapartite, founded in 2022 to coordinate work against AMR.

They include not only WHO, but also the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Organisation for Animal Health (WOAH).  

“The Quadripartite created important technical  and scientific foundations. Our role is to help sustain the political attention and coordination needed to turn those foundations into measurable results,” said Urbáez. 

Tracking systems incomplete 

Resistent Infections by Region

Each organization coordinates and reports on core components of the global response – but tracking systems remain fragmented and incomplete. 

For instance, WHO’s GLASS data base is supposed to follow trends in appropriate antibiotic use, and resistant infections recorded by health systems.  However around 42% of countries don’t report to WHO at all. And in the case of others, reporting is limited. 

That limits WHO’s ability to provide accurate global and regional tracking of actual trends in resistant infections. The slack in missing data is picked up by modelled estimates of the global burden of deaths and disease, undertaken by the Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation in collaboration with actors such as Wellcome Trust and the University of Oxford.

In the food and agriculture sector, FAO’s InFARM collects data on antimicrobial use in crop and animal production – but most of that data is not even publicly available.  This, despite the fact that the lion’s share of antibiotics, in terms of volumes, are used in agriculture and not humans. See related story:

Breeding Superbugs – Veterinary Drugs, More than Human Ones, Drive AMR 

On a more positive note, however, the World Organization for Animal Health (WOAH) has begun reporting on antimicrobial use on animal more transparently. It’s new ANIMUSE database follows trends in nearly 120 countries, by region and by leading antimicrobial agents. This provides valuable data to countries aiming to reduce inappropriate use. 

New WOAH data base tracking antimicrobial quantities used in animal production by reegion reveals the greatest excesses are in Asia and the Americas.

Budget strapped UN agencies – a weaker wheel of engagement ?  

The efforts of the Quadriparte, as well as the broader constellation of global and regional stakeholders, however, also face new challenges from the wave of budget cuts hitting global health  – and most notably, WHO’s AMR programme. 

WHO’s AMR team has been “emaciated” one insider notes – with a full-sized department now shrunk to a unit of just 13 people with no acting director.

The high-profile former WHO Assistant Director General Hanan Balkhy, who once led the AMR effort, left to become Director of WHO’s Eastern Mediterranean Region, and is now on leave from that position as a candidate to become the next WHO Director General. 

Pipeline of new antibiotics and preventative therapies 

Testing for antimicrobial resistance among a variety of different bacterial strains.

Another gap is in the arena of prevention. An October policy brief by the BEAM Alliance, an innovation hub for European biotech companies, cites one recent study showing that some 83% of adults with viral respiratory infections are still wrongly prescribed antibiotics, even though antibiotics do not treat viral infections.

But beyond the classic approaches of better diagnosis, prevention of common, chronic infections should also be given more attention in AMR R&D, argued Christian Terreaux, Public Affairs Director at OM Pharma, a BEAM Alliance member.

Christian Terreaux, OM Pharma and BEAM Alliance

This should include more investment in vaccines and immunotherapies that can help reduce recurrent infections and the resulting need for antibiotics, he said, citing research estimating that every €1 invested in prevention returns about €3 in economic benefits.

“AMR policy on infection prevention needs to consider a broader spectrum of preventive options beyond the important hygiene and sanitation measures and vaccination programs,” argued  Terreaux. And that should include “leveraging already existing options to reinforce the immune system, as well as stronger incentives to promote development of novel strategies.” 

Image Credits: WHO/Quinn Mattingly, The Lancet, L Pezzoli/ WHO, HDA , WHO/X, Health Policy Watch , Fletcher/Health Policy Watch , USAID Asia/Flickr, WHO GLASS, 2025, WOAH/ANIMUSE, DFID – UK Department for International Development.

The destruction of farmland, forests, wilderness and waterways is still outpacing restoration efforts worldwide, which lag far behind 2030 goals. Annual spending on restoration would need to rise more than fourfold, from $64 billion in 2022 to $296 billion by 2030, according to a report released in Yerevan, Armenia, a day before the close of the UN biodiversity summit, COP17.

Countries have launched nature restoration efforts for some 252 million hectares (623 million acres) of degraded forests, farmland, wetlands and coastline since 1966, an area larger than Algeria. But the pace of restoration work would have to roughly triple in the next four years for the world to meet its 2030 goal for reviving nature, according to a new United Nations report.

The assessment, published Thursday, is the first to tally restoration efforts across the world’s land masses, freshwater systems and oceans. It was released in Yerevan, Armenia, a day before the UN biodiversity summit there, COP17, closes amid divisions over who should pay to protect nature and how fast to cut the subsidies that fuel its destruction.

“Today, we are witnessing the makings of one of the largest movements for nature in recorded history,” said Inger Andersen, executive director of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), in a statement released with the report. “Yet, at the halfway point of the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, we are still not restoring nature at the scale or speed required. By 2030, we must turn inspiring initiatives into systemwide action.”

Geographical distribution of documented country-level restoration commitments.

The report, by the UN Environment Programme, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), measures progress against Target 2 of the 2022 Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, which commits countries to having at least 30% of degraded ecosystems under effective restoration by 2030.

The authors set that benchmark at about 738 million hectares, leaving the area currently under restoration at 34% of the 2022 target and about a quarter of the roughly 1 billion hectares countries have pledged in their national plans.

Meanwhile, land is still being degraded faster than it is being restored, according to the latest available data. Between 2015 and 2019, at least 100 million hectares of healthy, productive land was degraded every year, UN Desertification Convention figures cited in the report show.

“Financing the destruction of nature with 30 dollars against every dollar spent restoring it,” said Astrid Schomaker, the CBD’s executive secretary, as the summit entered its final week on Monday, “is like paying 30 people to tear down your house for every one hired to rebuild it.”

Restoration commitments by region (in Mha) and relative to total regional land area (%).

The UN climate summit, COP31, opens in Antalya, Turkey, next month. Degraded peatlands, which hold up to a third of the world’s soil carbon, produce about 4% of global human-caused greenhouse gas emissions, yet only around 15% of countries include them in their national climate plans.

“Restoration is woven very closely into nationally determined commitments,” said Doreen Robinson, deputy director of UNEP’s Ecosystems Division, at a briefing for journalists before the launch, “and so this report will be just as useful for that COP as it is for this COP.”

“We are making progress, but we are still in a net deficit here, and we need more investment,” Robinson said when asked whether the world was gaining ground overall. “We’re on the pathway. If we continue with our restoration investments and the other investments we’re talking about here at COP, we could reverse course for nature, but it is still a net deficit for nature.”

Seas and freshwater systems left behind

Marine and coastal ecosystems have 5.7 million hectares under restoration worldwide, 23% of what the 2030 target requires, according to the UN report.

Almost all of the documented progress is on land surfaces, where 232 million hectares are under restoration, about half of the 2030 target for terrestrial ecosystems. In contrast, freshwater ecosystems have 11 million hectares under restoration across 62 countries, a mere 4.5% of their target. Marine and coastal restoration efforts cover another 5.7 million hectares in 46 countries, or 23% of their target.

“Reported restoration lags far behind ambition in both freshwater (inland water) and marine and coastal ecosystems,” the report states, “yet these ecosystems are degrading at the highest rates, highlighting the critical need for accelerated implementation and improved data availability and reporting.”

Wetlands are disappearing three times faster than forests, according to research cited in the report. At sea, the 2024-2025 coral bleaching event was the most extensive on record, hitting about 84% of the world’s reef areas, which are critical breeding grounds for fish and other sea life.

“No ecosystem is sufficiently funded. All ecosystems are under threat, but we do know, and you’ll see in the report, that some lag behind others,” Robinson said. “In particular, freshwater and dryland ecosystems are lagging behind.”

China accounts for half the world’s restoration areas

Proportion of degraded land over total land area, 2019.

China reports 127.4 million hectares under restoration, roughly half the global total and 54% of all documented restoration on land. Mongolia and Kazakhstan follow with 12.2 million and 8.1 million hectares, respectively. Asia as a whole accounts for more than three-quarters of the restoration documented across land, seas and freshwater worldwide.

Listing an area as “under restoration” means only that the work has been documented, the report stresses, and “does not necessarily demonstrate that the ecosystem has recovered or that the activity meets the full requirements for effective restoration.”

The CBD’s own progress review, which drew on fewer national reports, records restoration work on only 193 million hectares, against 252 million in the joint report.

“Half of the countries that reported to the CBD in their seventh national report did not include any quantitative data on restoration, and these countries cover about 3 billion hectares of land,” said Yelena Finegold, who leads ecosystem restoration monitoring at FAO and was the report’s lead author. “So we’re also not capturing all of the incredible efforts that are happening on the ground.”

A fourfold finance gap

Underlying causes and indirect and direct drivers of biodiversity loss and nature’s decline.

Annual spending on restoration would need to rise more than fourfold, from $64 billion in 2022 to $296 billion by 2030, according to UNEP estimates first published in 2024 and cited again in the report.

Public budgets supplied 73% of the money, and five countries, among them China and the United States, accounted for 76% of public spending in the farming, forestry and fisheries programs behind most of it.

“Restoration-targeted official development finance reached only USD 1.2 billion,” the report says, “a fraction of what is needed by developing countries.”

Private investors added about $17 billion, more than two-thirds of it through biodiversity offsets and credits required under compliance schemes. Governments, meanwhile, spent an estimated $2.4 trillion on environmentally harmful subsidies in 2023. Total finance damaging nature reached $7.3 trillion, more than 30 times the amount invested in nature-based solutions.

“Mobilizing additional restoration finance will have limited effect,” the authors write, “if much larger public and private financial flows continue to drive ecosystem degradation.”

“We’re not talking about billions here,” said Salman Hussain, head of UNEP’s Economics of Nature Unit, “but 2.4 trillion in environmentally harmful subsidies.”

Finance fight in Yerevan

COP17 underway in Yerevan, Armenia. The summit wraps up on Friday as climate negotiators prepare to shift focus to COP31 in Türkiye next month.

COP17 is holding the first global review of the Kunming-Montreal framework. In Friday’s closing session, governments are due to adopt a plan for the years 2026-2030, known as the Yerevan Pathway.

Under the framework’s Target 18, countries also agreed to cut harmful subsidies by at least $500 billion a year by 2030. When the UN’s State of Biodiversity Action report was launched before the summit, the CBD said “far fewer” countries had committed to reducing harmful subsidies, and that targets on harmful incentives were “among those furthest behind.” Governments in Yerevan were still divided this week over language on reducing or phasing out such incentives, including agricultural subsidies, the CBD said Monday.

Negotiators remain split over a European Union push to widen the list of countries expected to contribute to international biodiversity finance to include emerging economies such as China and affluent Gulf states. The Arab group told the opening plenary it “rejects any attempt” to expand the list, Climate Home News reported.

“It’s been 20 years since that list was added,” Christopher O’Sullivan, Ireland’s nature minister, whose country holds the EU’s rotating presidency, told reporters. “Times have changed and there are new realities.”

Image Credits: Eutah Mizushima.

As temperatures rise, heatwaves, floods and other climate emergencies are increasing. Nearly one million Somalians were affected by a flood in 2020 (above).

A decade after the Paris Agreement took effect, climate-related heat, drought, floods, disease and dirty air are killing millions. The authors of a major annual report want the World Health Organization (WHO) to classify the crisis as a health emergency.

Climate change has become a global health emergency that needs a new WHO instrument to coordinate the global response, the Lancet Countdown on health and climate change said on Wednesday, in a new report that finds a warming world’s toll on health is rapidly expanding.

Heat caused by human-driven warming killed nearly three million people between 2016 and 2023; droughts and extreme rainfall spread faster, conditions for dengue and Vibrio bacteria reached new highs, and air pollution from burning fossil fuels is killing 2.78 million people a year, according to the Countdown’s 10th annual report, published in The Lancet.

“Because of the rapidly growing threats over the past decade, climate change has become a global health emergency,” the report asserts.

“Addressing it requires urgent course-correction to deliver coordinated and evidence-based action across borders to protect health and survival.”

Huge fossil fuel subsidies continue

As heatwaves turn to “heatstorms“, scorching forests, oceans and pavements around the globe, governments poured a net $6.2 trillion into direct fossil fuel subsidies from 2016 to 2024, the report found.

In 2024, 10 countries spent more propping up oil, gas and coal than on their health systems. Counting the unpaid costs of pollution and climate damage, the IMF puts total fossil fuel subsidies at about $7.4 trillion in 2024 alone, $6.7 trillion of it indirect – nearly 25 times the $300 billion a year that wealthy nations agreed in 2024 to deliver to developing countries for climate action by 2035.

The authors want WHO to develop a new instrument that formally recognises climate change as a global health emergency. Until one exists, they want existing tools, including the International Health Regulations (IHR), to be used to grade and respond to climate-driven health crises.

Heatwaves are becoming heat storms that are killing more people.

The WHO’s highest-level alarm, a public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC), has been used declared for COVID-19 and Ebola. However, it and other existing WHO instruments are designed for short outbreaks, not crises like climate change that run for decades.

“The problem currently with the public health emergency of international concern … is that it’s very tailored to short-lived emergencies and especially to emergencies that can cross borders like infectious diseases,” Marina Romanello, executive director of the Lancet Countdown, based at University College London, told a media briefing. 

The Countdown wants an emergency response “that is fit for purpose, not only for emergencies like infectious diseases but also for catastrophes like those caused by climate change … so that we’re not responding to emergency after emergency”, Romanello added.

“A decade after the Paris Agreement, our findings are unambiguous: the health harms of climate change are growing faster than the world’s response to them, and in many cases even accelerating,” said Romanello.

Absence of political will

“What’s missing is not evidence, but the political will to act on it,” said Helen Clark, a former Prime Minister of New Zealand, who chairs the Countdown’s board. “Governments must double down on their climate action commitments and rebuild momentum for international co-operation.”

The findings land as the UN biodiversity summit, COP17, enters its final days in Yerevan, Armenia, with a first global stocktake of nature restoration by UN agencies due on Thursday. In two weeks, governments meet in Antalya, Türkiye, for the annual UN climate summit, COP31.

Last week, the UN Environment Programme found that the chance to hold warming to 1.5°C higher than pre-industrial temperatures without significant overshoot has passed. Current policies put the world on track for about a 2.8°C increase. Keeping the overshoot to 1.8°C in the coming decades would require emissions to nearly halve within 10 years.

The Countdown’s targets for the coming decade include an immediate ban on new fossil fuel exploration, an end to coal power by 2035, health early warning systems in every country by the end of 2027, a global climate and health data commons, and grant-based finance to enable countries to adapt to climate without taking on more debt.

Meeting those targets, the authors concluded, is “no longer just the greatest public health opportunity of the century”. It “may be the only hope for a safe future.”

“The evidence is undeniable,” said WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus in a media release. “Climate change is one of the greatest threats to health facing humanity.”

Deadlier heat

Pregnant women, newborns and the elderly are worst affected by heat.

Heat was linked to a record 710,000 deaths in 2023, and almost three-quarters (71.5%) were caused by climate change – the first time the Countdown has attributed heat deaths directly to human-driven warming.

Between 2016 and 2023, heat was linked to an average of 540,800 deaths a year, up 36% on the decade before. Climate change caused 68.4% of them, up from 55% in the decade before the Paris Agreement took effect.

As global warming hurtles towards the 1.5°C target set by the Paris Agreement, the climate-driven toll on health has grown by about 15,600 deaths each year on average. Newborns, pregnant women and older people bear the brunt, the report says. Earlier this month,  UN climate chief Simon Stiell described heat’s threat to mothers and newborns as “a new fault line in the global climate crisis”.

“Heat-related mortality is just the tip of the iceberg,” Romanello told reporters ahead of the launch. “We know that behind every heat-related death, there’s a huge burden of disease, a huge increase in pressure on our health systems and healthcare.”

Heat erased 573 billion potential work hours in 2025 and $1.07 trillion in income, the third straight year above $1 trillion, according to the Countdown. Countries ranked lowest on the UN’s Human Development Index (HDI), which combines measures of health, education and income, lost the equivalent of 5% of their economic output, against 0.5% in the highest-ranked countries, with farm work accounting for 78% of their losses.

Meanwhile, the share of the world’s land in extreme drought grew eight times faster since 2016 than in the decade before, the report found, while the area hit by very extreme rainfall grew 57% faster.

Heatwaves and droughts pushed 127.9 million more people into moderate or severe food insecurity in 2024 than if their frequency had stayed at 1981–2010 levels.

Unhealthy diets contributed to 10.5 million deaths in 2023, up from 9.5 million in 2016, with red and processed meat and dairy linked to 1.6 million of them.

“In Southeast Asia, we’re seeing lost productivity due to heat being the equivalent of 3.9% of their GDP,” said Ollie Jay of the University of Sydney, who co-chairs the Countdown’s working group on health hazards.

“In an era where we’re so obsessed and preoccupied with growing the economy, this is a clear impact of climate change that is having a direct impact on the economic output of particular countries.”

Heat is having a devastating impact on crops, particularly in countries that can least afford it.

Diseases on the move

Higher temperatures have also expanded the reach of diseases. For example, dengue cases hit a record 14.4 million in 2024 as the climate for its transmission by the Aedes aegypti mosquito, rose 125% faster than in the decade before.

Warming seas are spreading Vibrio bacteria too. Estimated cases of vibriosis, an infection picked up from warm coastal water and seafood, reached a record 738,000 in 2025, and have climbed by about 24,700 a year since 2016, up from 3,600 a year in the decade before.

Malaria and West Nile virus are also moving into new places. In Africa’s highlands, the climate suitability for the deadliest malaria parasite, P. falciparum, rose almost 13%, while the suitability for West Nile virus climbed 12% in Europe. Some tropical areas are now too hot for both, but more suitable for dengue, the report said.

Dengue Chikungunya Zika
Climate change is expanding the areas where disease-carrying mosquitoes can operate.

Health systems left exposed

By 2025, 71% of WHO member states still had no plan to adapt their health systems to climate change, and 76% had not assessed their vulnerability since 2020, the report found.

Only 34.6% of the lowest-ranked countries on the HDI reported a strong ability to detect, prepare for and respond to health emergencies in 2025, in comparison to 80.6% of the highest-ranked countries, according to their own reports to WHO. 

That capacity matters more as climate change makes such emergencies more frequent and severe, the report said.

Where climate-informed health early warning systems exist, now in 75 countries, the number of people affected by storms and floods is rising more slowly.

Developing countries have costed their health adaptation needs at $3.3 billion a year. However, donors committed $1.1 billion in 2024.

“We’re not nearly providing enough finance to support countries in a just transition to support adaptation and to protect the health of people in every country,” said Romanello.

Aid from the 17 largest donors, which pays for health, development and humanitarian work in low- and middle-income countries, is projected to fall by more than $50 billion (about 25%) between 2023 and 2026, led by the withdrawal by the United States. Several donors have tied the cuts to higher defence spending, the report found.

“In the context of climate change, where adaptation finance is already described as ‘grossly insufficient’ relative to needs, further reductions risk widening the gap between rising risks and available support,” the report said, “leaving people increasingly unprotected amid rising climate hazards.”

That gap will shape the fight over health finance at COP31 in Antalya.

Meanwhile, the share of countries linking climate and health in their speeches at the annual General Debate of the UN General Assembly fell from 65.9% in 2021 to 26.3% in 2025. Climate plans from the most developed countries are consistently the least likely to mention health, the report found.

“Climate change, and particularly climate change and health as an issue, is being crowded out by the fact that we’ve got greater global instability,” said Niheer Dasandi, a professor at the University of Birmingham who leads the Countdown’s work on political engagement.

“As conflicts increase, as tensions rise, we see much more of that international attention diverted towards those issues.”

The tightening grip of fossil fuels

Vehicles are the biggest source of pollution in Delhi, one of the most polluted cities in the world.

Air pollution from burning fossil fuels killed 2.78 million people in 2023, about the same toll as in 2016. Deaths fell in 75 of the 140 countries assessed, led by China, saving 323,000 lives a year, but rising deaths elsewhere cancelled out the gain. 

In countries in the index’s middle tier, such as India, the death rate climbed 20.7%. Smoke from cooking and heating with wood, coal and other solid fuels killed another two million people in their homes.

International development lenders committed $4.7 billion in 2024 to projects aimed at cutting air pollution, less than 1% of all development finance, according to a Clean Air Fund report.

The strategies of the world’s 100 largest oil and gas companies put them on track to produce 150% more in 2040 than their share under a 1.5°C pathway, up from 138% a year earlier, the report found. 

The report also traces a decades-long disinformation and lobbying campaign by major oil companies, which had accurately projected dangerous warming by the early 1980s. It points to proposals from public health researchers and the UN to restrict fossil fuel advertising in the way tobacco ads were restricted.

“The tactics are very well described, and they include the manufacture of doubt,” Diarmid Campbell-Lendrum, who leads WHO’s climate change and health work, said on Monday at a separate webinar launching a paper on climate disinformation by a WHO civil society working group.

“The distraction onto other issues, trying to point the finger of blame at anything but tobacco consumption… are exactly the same tactics, and even in some cases the same players, which are now spreading climate disinformation.”

 

Image Credits: UNICEF, AP, WMO, International Confederation of Midwives, WMO, James Gathany/ PHIL, CDC, Public Domain, Chetan Bhattacharji.

Who will steer the World Health Organization through its next chapter? Explore Health Policy Watch’s daily series examining the platforms, records, and institutional hurdles facing each contender for WHO Director-General, continuing today with Gevorg Tamamyan. Access all candidate profiles on our dedicated election site.

Tamamyan’s campaign challenges the World Health Assembly to re-anchor global health in a shared commitment where geography never decides who lives.
Tamamyan’s campaign challenges the World Health Assembly to re-anchor global health in a shared commitment where geography never decides who lives.

Dr Gevorg Tamamyan, an Armenian paediatric oncologist and professor at Yerevan State Medical University, has joined the race for WHO Director-General under a unique cross-regional nomination by the Republic of Botswana. Entering a competitive field of seven candidates as a clinician-academic and the youngest contender (born in 1987), his candidacy introduces a distinct frontline perspective to the 2027-2032 election.

His career spans clinical practice, national health system consolidation, global diplomacy, and humanitarian protection in conflict zones, and Tamamyan anchors his bid in a central thesis: “humanity first” and the principle that “geography must not decide who lives.” In response to the acute financial contraction, geopolitical rifts, administrative bloat as well as aid models that perpetuate dependency, he envisions a WHO that empowers countries, evaluates performance by measurable population health outcomes, communicates transparently, and restores institutional trust.

However, his central challenge will be convincing member states that a clinician-academic without sovereign ministry or UN executive experience can govern the world’s premier health agency. While his sweeping platform offers bold prescriptions for an overextended organisation, his wide-ranging proposals could conflict with operational command of dense UN statutory frameworks, civil service rules, and entrenched national interests.

From clinical execution to global reform

Calling for patient-centred WHO reform, Gevorg Tamamyan (second left) presents his vision in Berlin alongside fellow candidates María Neira, Hanan Al Kuwari, and Budi Sadikin.
Calling for patient-centred WHO reform, Gevorg Tamamyan (second left) presents his vision in Berlin alongside fellow candidates María Neira, Hanan Al Kuwari, Budi Sadikin, and moderator Björn Kümmel.

Translating his central campaign thesis into operational pillars – articulated in response to a candidate query by Health Policy Watch, across his social media communications and at the World Health Summit (WHS) in Berlin – his platform rests on four core commitments:

  1. Patient-centred governance and delivery over process: Under his “WHO for U” vision (representing the individual, unity, and universal health), Tamamyan argues that institutional trust has become dangerously fragile. He asserts that WHO must adopt the patient as its non-negotiable “North Star,” measuring success by frontline health outcomes rather than administrative activity. While member states own health delivery, he posits that WHO’s normative impact can be operationally traced through stronger national plans, disease registries, access to essential medicines, standards of care, and targeted technical support.
  2. Health sovereignty and the Accra Reset: Aligning directly with the principles of the Accra Reset and his nominating state, Botswana, Tamamyan advocates for country ownership over external aid dependency. He supports establishing local biomanufacturing, regional laboratory networks, and costed national health strategies across the Global South.
  3. Transparency, accountability, and refocused scaling: Tamamyan advocates testing interventions against real-world evidence, openly acknowledging when strategies fail, and reducing unfunded mandates. Responding to Health Policy Watch regarding which specific mandates WHO should scale back, he emphasised that scaling back cannot be a unilateral decision by the Director-General, but must be conducted transparently in partnership with member states to restore trust and unlock flexible, unearmarked financing.
  4. Workforce modernisation and operational HR reform: Addressing WHO’s 154-day recruitment average and demographic gap (under 1% of staff under 30), Tamamyan outlines a targeted HR overhaul. His “No Empty Desks” policy enforces a 60-day hiring cap, reclassifies interim roles as open vacancies, and mandates quarterly public tracking. Concurrently, drawing on his trajectory leading a national department at 31, he advocates giving young talent real decision-making authority and governance seats.

To translate these principles into immediate momentum, Tamamyan outlined a focused first 100 days roadmap in Berlin. His priorities centre on empowering WHO’s internal workforce and launching direct diplomatic outreach to non-participating nations – specifically visiting the United States and Argentina to listen, address concerns, and encourage their full return to the organisation.

From paediatric oncology to health system building

Main building of Yerevan State Medical University where Tamamyan trained and serves as Professor and Department Chair.
Main building of Yerevan State Medical University where Tamamyan trained and serves as professor.

By anchoring global governance reform in clinical urgency, empirical rigour, and fresh system-building, his policy roadmap directly mirrors his own professional trajectory, moving from paediatric oncology wards and hospital consolidation in Armenia to international health networks and crisis management in active conflict zones.

After earning his MD, PhD, and DSc degrees from Yerevan State Medical University (YSMU) alongside an MSc in Advanced Oncology from the University of Ulm, he completed postdoctoral research and fellowships across leading global institutions, including UT MD Anderson Cancer Center, St. Anna Children’s Hospital in Vienna, EORTC in Brussels, and Dana-Farber/Boston Children’s Cancer Center.

At the age of 31, Tamamyan translated this academic preparation into national-scale execution by leading the consolidation of Armenia’s fragmented paediatric cancer services into the unified Pediatric Cancer and Blood Disorders Center, serving as its head from 2019 to 2024. Under his direction, the centre introduced standardised multidisciplinary care protocols and established Armenia’s first dedicated paediatric oncology fellowship programme, with reported survival rates for childhood malignancies rising to approximately 80%.

Extending his system-building internationally, Tamamyan leads multi-country technical cooperation across resource-constrained settings. He serves as President of the International Society of Pediatric Oncology Asia Continental Branch (SIOP Asia) and President of Pediatric Oncology East and Mediterranean (POEM) Group, a network that encompasses 110 cancer centres across 28 countries.

Alongside his academic and clinical responsibilities, he co-founded the City of Smile Charitable Foundation to guarantee financial coverage for paediatric cancer treatment. To expand local clinical trials, he established the Armenian-based Immune Oncology Research Institute. He also co-founded OncoDaily, a global oncology media platform.

Non-aligned bid for global health sovereignty

Tamamyan advocates robust local production and regional testing hubs to reduce dependence on external health supply chains.
Tamamyan advocates robust local production and regional testing hubs to reduce dependence on external health supply chains.

A surprise candidate, Tamamyan’s nomination introduces an unconventional geopolitical manoeuvre: an Armenian clinician-academic nominated by the southern African nation of Botswana. He leverages his positioning as a complete outsider to WHO headquarters and national ministries to differentiate his bid from his competitors.

Reinforcing this platform, he asserts that WHO must maintain a direct physical presence in conflict zones to enforce the protection of health facilities and workers, defining WHO neutrality as active engagement with all combatant parties. He advocates for real-time mapping of vulnerable chronic care facilities before conflicts escalate and establishing protected health corridors to maintain the flow of cancer therapeutics, dialysis, and emergency evacuations.

Facing WHO’s budget contraction and recent external audit scrutiny over the WHO Foundation’s low transfer rates and heavy earmarking, Tamamyan proposes reforming the Foundation into a mass public-giving instrument. Citing the Foundation’s reported $215 million mobilised across its first five years, he envisions cultivating millions of regular individual donors to generate flexible, unearmarked support for WHO’s core budget – backed by full transparency regarding administration costs, donor acquisition, and net transfers.

Finally, addressing the declared retreat of the United States and Argentina from the WHO, Tamamyan leverages his non-aligned positioning to spearhead diplomatic outreach aimed at bringing both countries back into full WHO participation. Choosing Boston as the first stop on his campaign tour, he argues that an outsider unencumbered by regional bloc politics can restore fractured trust by listening, eliminating administrative bloat, and demonstrating that WHO membership delivers undeniable frontline value.

Political challenges for a diplomatic outsider

Tamamyan’s non-aligned bid faces complex geopolitical dynamics across Member States accustomed to traditional regional caucuses and political compromises.
Tamamyan’s non-aligned bid faces complex geopolitical dynamics across member states accustomed to traditional regional caucuses and political compromises.

Tamamyan’s non-aligned bid faces complex geopolitical dynamics across member states accustomed to traditional regional voting blocs. His nomination by Botswana challenges African Union caucuses that typically seek pan-African consensus, while his Armenian nationality adds a third European Region contender alongside Dr Hans Kluge (Belgium) and Dr María Neira (Spain).

Responding to this scrutiny, Tamamyan asserts that “health is not a bloc,” arguing that Botswana’s sponsorship reflects shared Global South alignment – specifically around country ownership, local biomanufacturing, and the Accra Reset – rather than geographic origin.

However, his lack of ministry- or UN-scale governance experience presents a central hurdle for a candidate seeking to manage a multi-billion-dollar international bureaucracy. Pushing back against this concern, Tamamyan frames the Director-General role as a system-level orchestrator: “I have never tried to be the smartest person in the room. My mission has always been to surround myself with the smartest people, empower them… and hold them accountable,” he maintains.

Finally, his clinician-first instinct exposes potential vulnerabilities regarding institutional discipline. During the World Health Summit in Berlin, Tamamyan asserted that WHO should prioritise frontline responsiveness over rigid jurisdictional limits: “We should be the place where anyone can call, can say, ‘Okay, I have this problem,’ even if it is not within our mandate, but we are able to help”. While demonstrating an agile, patient-centred ethos, this willingness to step outside formal mandates could clash with member state demands for strict focus, fiscal restraint, and an end to organisational mission creep.

Test case for transregional outsider reform

Grounding his campaign in an unconventional cross-regional nomination by Botswana, Tamamyan rejects traditional regional bloc politics in favour of his “WHO for U” platform. Setting out his core rationale for organisational reform – that “architecture begins with who we are building for” – he argues that a WHO built for people must lead rather than compete.

His diagnostic of WHO’s vulnerabilities – sluggish recruitment, unfunded mandates, and operational drag – strikes a chord across capitals eager for change.

Yet the critical friction running through his candidacy remains the divide between expansive frontline vision and granular institutional execution. In Geneva, promises of unbureaucratic overhaul inevitably collide with rigid civil service statutes, binding legal frameworks, and the fiscal discipline demanded by member states.

Ultimately, Member States face a fundamental choice between seasoned political executives and an outsider offering bold, unvetted ambition.

Profiles will be updated as the campaign progresses, stay tuned on the microsite.

Image Credits: Gevorg Tamamyan via LinkedIn , Felix Sassmannshausen/HPW, Diana2198 via Wikipedia, Yuri Shkoda via Canva, WHO/Antoine Tardy .