Thank you for listening to Pictures Media Radio. Welcome to Policy and Rights,
the show about the government policy and human rights. Welcome about the policy and
writes her in Depictions Media Radio, I'm your host. Michael Cloggs. Disease
X may to some people sound like a lot of fear mongering and preparing for
nothing, but it could be just the opposite that by preparing for disease X,
we build a global system of healthcare that shares information that ensures that medications,
vaccines, and other needed things to keep people healthy are available. We
did see through the pandemic that by sharing the vaccines through different systems that were
set up by the WHL, it ensures that some of the underdeveloped countries had
access to vaccines and that instead of watching vaccines that as they expired, go
down the drain, instead they were stored and distributed to other countries that had
trouble affording vaccine. And it isn't just vaccine, it's information. How does
one country build a system to prevent a disease or deal with a epidemic,
Because it may be something more than COVID nineteen. It could be something like
a bubba, which is a much deadlier virus that kills people in a matter
of days instead of killing them, which I see not so much killing them
or placing them in in hospital care. There are other tools that were needed,
like ventilators and things that help doctors deal with the symptoms of different diseases
through the pandemic. They could have been shared how to build that technology and
how to use the technology and techniques use to ensure that that technology is used
in the best way possible to deal with symptoms and to keep people alive and
healthy. It is also some part of dealing with disease acts. We're going
to hear from a panel of experts, and one is doctor Tetros from the
WHL. We're gonna hear from a communicable disease expert from India. We're also
going to hear from the CEO of Astrosenica who developed COVID nineteen vaccine. Keeping
in mind the Astrosenica was not a vaccine manufacturer until COVID nineteen hit. By
using shared information and minds through Oxford University, they came up with a vaccine.
And there's all the others that are experts in disease and healthcare that we're
going to hear from as they all spoke at the World Economic Forum about how
to prevent disease. X at the vol Economic Forum is working on By the
way, my name is Sambishane and I head up the Center for Health and
Healthcare at the Volt Economic Forum, So we've been working on this. There
is an initiative called Partnership for Health Systems, Sustainability and Resilience. Many of
the folks here in the room are working with us on that. Basically,
the idea is how do we prepare, As I said, how do we
prepare the health system to respond to not just you know, pandemics, but
also other crisis. You know, we know there is a looming crisis of
climate change that's going to impact our health system. How do we respond to
increased number of diseases, whether it's communicable disease, non communicable disease. We
have to prepare the system well for that. So that's an important discussion here.
We also have initiatives in terms of biothreats disease surveillance. How do we
make sure that we have a good global disease surveillance. We have data systems
that can be accessed quickly so that private sector can do their job. They
can come up with the medical countermeasures, whether it's vaccines, diagnostics, therapeutics,
so we've been working on that as well. We are looking at vaccine
equity. We are looking at ways to make sure that there is manufacturing in
various parts of the world. You know, Africa was a big example,
making sure that we have capacity there to make vaccines in case there is another
pandemic. So those are some of the things we've been working on. But
I think today we are really grateful for this distinguished panelist here to talk about
this. Without taking much time, I will hand it over to our excellent
moderator here, doctor Nancy Brown. Nancy is the CEO Chief executive officer of
American Heart Association. Nancy, I will hand it over to you to introduce
the panelists and take it on from here. Thank you, Thank you,
sham. Thank you all so much for attending this very important discussion, and
I appreciate your opening comments. I have the highest regard for the Center for
Health and Healthcare and the work that only the World Economic Forum can do to
bring all of the actors together to address really important issues. I had the
honor of serving as the Chair of the Health and Healthcare Governors during January twenty
twenties meeting when we first were planning for what we then know, of course
was a global pandemic, and I admired then and I continue to admire now
how the World Economic Forum thinks ahead. And so, as Sham said,
the goal of our discussion today is to really talk about what can we and
should we be doing to make sure our health systems are prepared for any future
crisis that might come along that requires global collaboration and participation, and how can
we be sure that we learn from the past to strength systems for the future,
And that will be the goal of our discussion today. We do have
a very esteemed panel of experts here that I'm honored to introduce, and in
introducing each of them, I'm going to ask them to give some opening comments
as well about the key components very briefly, that they each of them believe
health systems should prioritize for an effective response to a potential crisis. And of
course it's our honor always to have doctor Tadros with us, the Director General
of the World Health Organization, and doctor Tatris. May I ask you to
answer that very simple question to start with, thank you. Can you rephrase
maybe the question, yes, of course, at the highest level, what
do you think health systems should prioritize for an effective response to a potential crisis.
I think that's a big question. But I would like to start to
is especially the disease x's attracting a lot of attention, and I hope you
have seen in the social media, but it's not a new idea. The
first time we used the terminology was in twenty eighteen. The discussions were in
twenty seventeen. I was just new director general. As you know, we
annually list the emerging disease and mers could be one zeke ebola. Those we
know, But then we said, there are things that are unknown that may
happen, and anything happening is a matter of when not if, so we
need to have a place holder for that, for the disease we don't know
that may come. And that was when we gave the name this is X.
So this is X is a place is older forknown disease. I just
wanted to start by clarifying that because there is already at a lot of attention.
If I may although COVID came immediately. We were preparing for COVID like
disease. You may even call COVID as the first disease X. And it
may happen again. Of course, there are some people who say, oh,
this may create panic. No, it's better actually to anticipate something that
may happen because it has happened in our history many times, and prepare for
it. We shouldn't fate things unprepared. We can prepare for some unknown things
as well, because there are basic things you can you can do. Then
that takes me your question, of course, then we should prepare means it
could be an early warning system that could be installed and then preparedness planning,
for instance with COVID. We have seen it in prepared planning when our hospitals
were stretched beyond their capacity. But in terms of space and also workforce,
how can you have a search when anything comes you can expand quickly so you
can manage your patients. We lost many people because we could manage them.
They could have been saved, but there was no space, there was no
enough oxygen. So how can you have a system that can expand when the
need comes? This, whatever disease, you should prepare for it. You
don't need to know that there are common factors in terms of supply chain for
instance. The same so whether it's in health systems or even the private sector.
By the way, in research and developed and for instance, you can
prepare for it. Actually started with this. This is x issue with research,
research and development blueprint. It's a blueprint and research and development should be
at the center also to test drugs, to test other other tools. And
then of course the health infrastructure. I said it a bit, but the
health infrastructure is bigger than what I said, the oxygen and the space.
So preparing that in all its forms, especially with a focus on primary healthcare.
High income countries were surprised because their investments in the last many decades was
on high tech technology high you know, cutting a technology, in tertiary services,
even robotic surgery, but their investment in primary healthcare was not there.
Even some countries couldn't do contact tracing. So to prepare countries, I think
renewed commitment to strengths and primary health care is very important. So it starts
from there, and then of course we can go. Then the other is
we shouldn't see it in terms of wealth services, in terms of research,
development and zone. We should see it also in terms of communities. I
communities can prepare for diseas X. There are many things that can be done
at community level and then public health, education and communication should be at the
center. So this is what I would like to say as a start.
Thank you, thank you doctor Taylors, and welcome back, and drill down
into some of those comments in a moment. Pritha ready, thank you for
being here from India where you and your family lead a very large healthcare system
of Hollow Health. I would love you to enter, produce a little bit
about yourself and your health system and maybe also answer the brief question what do
you think health systems should do to prioritize. So I'm preta vice chair of
Healthcare private sector healthcare group in India. We've been there for forty years.
What we've done in forty years, I think the learning over the past post
COVID has really you know, intensified what needs to be done and disease X.
I know the name seems like a science fiction film, but basically it's
something all of us need to be aware and alert definitely for future times to
come, because it's definitely a clear and present danger. I want to draw
an analogy with the army, especially the Indian Army. We know that every
day the infantry actually prepares for war. You know, they go through intense
training and at any time, if there is war at the border, they're
ready to go and face that. Healthcare workers, healthcare systems, we now
have to look at the future like that that at any time, anything can
happen and we don't know which side it's going to come from, and there's
no going away from that. So I think we have to prepare and be
prepared. Like there are alerts for you know, global scenarios. For US,
it's usually cyclone of floods, there's a red alert or an Orange alert.
I think the red alerts have to be flagged much quicker, which means
we need to be able to realize that this could be potentially a huge problem.
And for that, there's been so much of discussion about AI and how
can AI really help us to find and detect the problem so early that we
can actually plan and prepare for interventions. I think that that is extremely important.
But more than anything else, I am a very proud Indian, and
I think that the leadership, the quick decisions and the insistent decisions to do
what we have to do at the right time. Sometimes they are hard decisions.
You'll face that, but I think to take the right decision, the
hard decision, but to take a decision has been very important. And I
think a population of one point three billion people, if we have been able
to come out of this relatively, you know, better than which could have
been anticipated. And the fact that there was early intervention of vaccination, there
was a lockdown. It was hard, but it was a decision making which
I think helped us. So I think that's important going forward. Thank you,
Preter. Next Ward Jacobs, who was the chief executive officer of Phillips
Healthcare, Why i'd love you to say a little bit about your company and
give us your perspective. Yeah, thank you so much. Phillips on a
thirty three years old we focused fully on delivering healthcare solutions and we were very
active also during COVID, and I think some major lessons we learned as a
company. But I think also we should take away for the healthcare system.
First of all, it's all about the patient, and I think that one
of the learnings during COVID wars that actually you cannot treat the patient maybe like
you would normally do because you need to isolate you cannot touch the patient.
Also, what are the specific means that you need to ramp up very quickly,
like respiratory devices, monitors we had, of course, the vaccines,
and how do you mobilize the supply chain globally to actually do that? So
I think that's the second big lesson. Thirdly, it's all about the staff
that needs to take care of these patients, and very quickly we saw that
actually it became more and more challenging for the healthcare systems to actually keep the
staff up and running to keep them motivated, but also actually to protect them
from the disease and keep doing their job. And then thirty was how can
you then apply the latest also digital technology to help them in their daily jobs,
because there's a lot of technology available, but actually how do you then
make sure that that quickly gets into the hands of the staff of the system
and you can actually scale it very rapidly. Last, but not least act
to the agility I think we all learned that we need to have. It
was also about fair allocation of means and as an industry player. That is
not an easy task, and actually we were very close with the WHO as
well to make sure that actually in the allocation mechanisms that we had, that
we made sure that everybody in the world could benefit from equipment, because very
quickly, what you see people get very centric on their own interest and actually,
if the system closes down and everybody only focusing on their own interests,
actually cannot solve a global crisis. So I think keep the world open,
make sure that we allocate fairly and that actually we keep the scaling up possible
is something that we took away as some of our lessons. Wonderful, Roy,
Thank you so much. Next is my honor to introduce her Excellency Nisha
trend and Leman from Brazil, the Minister of Health of Brazil, and I
would invite you to use your headphones as her excellency will speak in Portuguese.
If you could introduce yourself and say a little bit about your perspective on health
systems strengthening. Thank you, yeah, yeah, yeah. You speaking in
fourth is a premier. First of all, I'd like to say that I
bring the perspective of Brazil's the vision of the ministry of health. Would I
like to make a sort of more encompassing reflection along the lines of what my
fellow pananists have done. First of all, doctor cads added on made a
good explanation about the origin of disease X. Nevertheless, I believe that all
of us see this issue in the light of the impact of the COVID nineteen
pandemic. Several evaluations were performed in Brazil, and the first point that I
would like to bring up is to remind you and remind you of Klaus Edward,
the German sociologists, who says that society has learned, but it is
difficult for the world to change. So we have the learnings of the pandemic,
but we need some transformative forces in order to think about an effective ability
to respond to potential diseases that may call cause pandemics. And this regard to
have brasilient health systems is fundamental. This has also been set here. Still,
I would like to start by mentioning that and situations of a pandemics threat
or in a picture of a pandemic or epidemics that may have a severe national
impact, there is a preceding factor in my view. I mean not proceeding,
but it leads to bringing these uh preconditions of a health system together,
which is the time for a political response and that is valid domestically in a
pandemic as well as around the world. There have been there has been important
analytical work done in that regard, and in the case of the administration prior
to that of President's Lula, what we saw was a very negative response in
view of the possibilities of the health health system. The country failed to respond
in that pandemic present eleven percent of COVID caused deaths with a population that if
we work this out comes out as four percent. So what to do as
of now? A few points that I consider important. First, the investment
in R and D and innovation and decreasing the inequality amongst countries in this regard,
especially concerning the development and production of vaccines, medication, diagnoses and tests.
So we are proposing an alliance for such production to be made at a
local and regional level. At the same time, it is very important for
a vision to be implemented about encompassing surveillance for diseases and possible epidemics and pandemics.
That surveiliance should be seen in a whole fashion, starting with primary care.
As doctor that this has said, we also want to reinforce epidemiological centers
in the country so that surveillance can be better oriented. In this regard,
I'd like to stress a Brazilian experience of the Center for Health Data Collection and
Analysis, which is an agency that attempts to integrate data, which is another
crucial factor when you think about structuring to respond to pandemics, to integrate data
and to be able to analyze them in order to ensure such surveillance work.
One of the projects in course is one of early Warning for possible outbreaks,
which integrates primary care, including the role of community health workers in the country,
all the way up to genomic surveillance. I think that this is a
very important aspect. Lastly, a national strategy that we have and that we
want to expand in a global health discussion, putting together an industrial health economic
complex that allows for us to under organize this production of imports and thereby decrease
equalities, thus strengthening national systems, especially in low income countries and middle income
countries to namely developing countries. Lastly, to draw your attention to a critical
aspect, which is that of establishing a virtuous relationship between science production and scientific
knowledge as a decision making process. I believe we should also have a more
in depth look at that what is the best way to make this association,
to build this bridge and comparatively analyze the different formats we observed in the process
of responding to the COVID nineteen pandemic and other diseases like Ebola and the creation
of CDC Africa, among several other initiatives, namely to center the discussion around
the best way to have the public policies defined by scientific evidence on the one
hand, and bensening health systems on the other hand in an intego fashion.
I think that these are the best ways. And to conclude, I think
that we are discussing a tool for pandemics in the WHO and I think it
health alone cannot just resolve all of the discussions in matters, so we have
to include in this agenda the social protection systems which are vital in times of
crisis like the ones that we lived through recently. Thank you, Thank you,
Her excellency, and I really agree on this with all that you've said,
especially the last point about the expanding outside of healthcare those systems that must
be part of our response. Next, I will introduce the kind gentleman to
my left, Michelle Dmayer, who is the chairman of the board of AstraZeneca.
I wonder if you'd like to give us your opening come. Yes,
of course. I think what we can sayst of all is that a good
preparation for a crisis happens when there is no crisis. So having a panel
like this here is already a great start because we have all the players of
the health care coresystem group presented here. Because at the end we have to
all work together to try to address it. Now, as you said in
the chairman of s Twezeneca that obviously has played a pretty special le during the
COVID crisis, and I think we have a few lessons that we can share
from this. Just as a reminder, we are not We were not a
vaccine company at the time. We just decided that this was a call for
action that we had to try to use or now or networks to try to
help, and so we signed the license agreement with the University of Oxford.
We then put together a network of more than twenty contract manufacturing organization to whom
which we transferred technology and skills to basically help building the vaccine, which is
it's not like building a pill, it's much more complicated than that. And
then finally we managed to distribute more than three billion dollars of vaccines at no
profit, of which a more or less two third went to law and medium
income countries, mainly through Covacts, which was obviously a very important organization at
the time too, and obviously said you were here to witness this. Well,
I think it's important if you do all the lessons from this experience.
First of all, quick action, quick decision making extremely important, but even
more important partnerships and especially PPPs you have earned me. We have partnered with
academia obviously, with governments, with regulators, with third party commercial contractors,
and with engrs. And it's only because of that that we finally managed to
distribute the largest doors actually of COVID vaccines during this crisis. So that is
lessons learned. But I would say spontaneous reaction, because the crisis was at
the door when this has happened. If you sink back a little bit,
say, oh, could we better prepare next time? We put a lot
of emphasis nowadays on sustainability and resilience of health systems. We've seen that health
systems were not prepared for that last time, not only to handle the sheet
of volume of COVID case, but you know some examples. For instance,
in the UK, it is estimated that a million cancer cases were not diagnosed
during COVID just because of lack of resources in the health system. So obviously
that cannot happen. It is a transformation that will take a certain time,
and I would have basically three recommendations for that. First of all, I
say it's important that heals become a strategic asset for every country, and it's
not always the case. I can tell you that we do that for energy,
why not for health? Is there anything more important that the good health
of your population? Because good health do ice prosperity, do ice work efficiency,
and so economy grows, and so we really to work on that.
There's a McKinsey study that says that with good health we could add twelve trillion
dollars to the global GDP by twenty forty. That is quite an impact if
we work on it. So there's pin one. The secondness, it's not
just about spending more, it's also spending smart and shocking statistics. For instance,
in OECD countries, the average pens on prevention is three percent of the
budget of health systems. And obviously if you spend so little on prevention,
you end up spending the majority of your budget on hospitalization and on late treatments.
So there's a lot of change that needs to happen there and that can
be extremely useful. And then the turn one is obviously we have to build
on technology, on data management, on artificial intelligence. I agree with you,
there's a lot to do. We can start building crossed aboard the libraries
of viruses, of vaccines, share all data with each other, because it's
quite important it happens. Then artificial intelligence can also help a lot, not
only in drug discovery it's a lot of potential there, but also in the
administration of health systems and to inter rationalize and to make sure that finally,
most of the budget is we spend for the primary care and for innovations rather
than being always reactive. So I would hold it here for the wonderful ideas.
Thank you, thank you so very much, and welcome back around.
On several of those doctor Tajos, I would like to come back to you.
You know, obviously the World Health Organization is in the unique place to
assure global collaboration among countries, and certainly you have some work products underway to
address these emerging challenges and to promote sustainable improvements in healthcare delivery worldwide. I
wonder if you could share a little bit more about your plans in that regard.
Yeah, thank you. I think I should start from thanking Astraseneka.
Also what Michelle said is correct, I think he asked, also said my
my friend to to attest to it. Since I'm here, I hope I
represent both of US and Astrasenica. The vaccine has reached many developing and you
know, middle and low income countries and the volume he he he, he
said, and we're very very grateful. So we we we know that and
the technology transfer you have met with other countries to produce yes, and I
think that really really helped and that could be a model for the for the
future. So I fully agree with what you said with regard to as Strasenica's
contribution, and where recognition is Jewish, it should be given. And this
is an honest witness. I think said he's saying that, so thank you
so much, Michelle and Astragenica. Then on the issues, I think to
prepare. Of course, as I said that, after we started putting a
place holder, you know, the first that game was in the disease xs
COVID. So we have experience now and we're preparing based on that experience.
A lot of assessment has been done by independent panels and experts, and based
on the recommendation, many initiatives have We have already started many initiatives and one
is together with many partners, by the way, it's not just who,
but with many partners, for instance, with the World Bank and other colleagues,
we have established a pandemic fund, so that's basically for preparedness and some
countries have already benefited from it. And second round is in the pipeline.
And then there are in hand said systems tools we were working on. For
instance, one of the problems, as you may remember, is the equity.
Again, while thanking Austrasienca, it was a serious problem many countries.
High income countries were holding vaccines and low income countries were not getting vaccines.
Access was a problem, and to address the equity problem We have established the
Marine Technology Transfer have in South Africa. This is to increase local production and
fifteen countries are participating and Brazil is one which is already represented here. But
there are countries represented almost from every every region Europe, Asia and the Pacific,
Latin America, Africa and so on. So that's going well and we
hope we will have an increased production capacity that can address the equity problem.
And there are still in systems and tools. There were weaknesses as we all
know, in cer valance in sharing samples, and we have established the who
BIOHAP to share samples and to improve surveillance. We have the Pandemic Intelligence Collective
Intel Collaborative Intelligence HAVE which we established and it's up and running now. It's
in good shape. And there are other things we're doing. I don't want
to bother you outlining everything. There are things we're doing with workforce, but
the key is the capacity we build in each and every country. We're as
strong as the weakest link, So where are we weak and especially at the
country level, that's where we should focus, while also investing in the global
initiatives that we have started. And then the other key in order to have
better prepared and to address that. This is X is the Pandemic Agreement.
The Pandemic Agreement can bring all the experience, all the challenges that we have
faced, and all the solutions into one and that agreement can help us to
prepare for the future in a better way because this is about a common enemy
and without a shared response starting from the preparedness, you know we will face
the same problem as COVID. And deadline for the Pandemic Agreement is May twenty
twenty four and member states are negotiating. This is between countries, and I
hope they will deliver this Pandemic Agreement by that time on the deadline, because
if this generation cannot do it, we're the lived community. We have the
first hand experience. I don't think coming generation, the next generation will do
it. So for our children and grandchildren's sake, I think we have to
convert all the lessons we have learned into this pandemic and prepare the world for
the future because this is a common global interest and national interest, very narrow
national interest should not come into the way. Of course, national interest is
natural, but it's the narrow national interest that could be difficult and affecting the
negotiations even as we speak, so we're still not prepared. But I think
there are many moving parts. We have started good ones, all of us
together, that can prepare us better if we focus on the implementation of these
initiatives. Take you back to you, Thank you, Teos Michelle, may
I come back to you for a moment. Estra Zeneca is a co founder
of the Partnership of Health System Sustainability and Resilience, a really important initiative of
the World Economic Forum. Tell us about some of the solutions this partnership is
driving and how that is going to help us be prepared, you know,
across border. Yeah, with pleasure. It's a partnership that was also born
out of the crisis. We started that in twenty twenty in partnership with a
London School of Economics and with the f and after that we had all the
partners joining us, like Phillips and KPMG. The idea is really to try
to make an assessment of all the health system in the world. So far
we have gone to thirty countries to do that and to produce a report,
you know, with the conclusions, but as well all the recommendations that we
can do We then kind of take over with our partners and organized one tables
in each of the countries where we try to put together all the actors of
the ecosystem and really try to work on solutions, get them and what you
see is more and more we get there and it becomes a source of inspiration.
You know. I can give you a few examples. For instance,
in Greece where based on the recommendation they started the whole program for scanning conic
kidney diseases and trying to anticipate that. Or in Japan were based on the
recommendation they finally managed to consolidate all the data in one electronic system that they
can use for the future. So these are a few examples that can be
done. We continue to work on that because at the end, it's each
of the small initiative for which each time we can find the white partner and
maybe also a different way of financing that will help turning this financial resilience of
health system into a better situation. It's really fascinating and I'm going to come
to you because you can speak about this topic from the health system point of
view. And of course India had the recent G twenty presidency, and I
would love for you to tell us a little about how power healthcare systems are
aligning their efforts with this international agenda that we've been talking about. Thank you,
I think you know. The G twenty presidency was definitely something which made
us very proud. But more than anything else, it said systems and there
was a lot of work which has gone into it and commitments made that we
have to handle health care for the future. One of the issues which came
up was the rising burden of infectious diseases and how can we put good,
strong vigilance systems into our healthcare, especially with the fact that you know,
a lot of India is not really in the urban regions. There's a lot
of rural and we have six hundred thousand villages and how do we use technology
to reach out to it. It was a very strong focus during the G
twenty and using technology, using telemedicine to reach out to the rural population was
one major initiative. The other reason there's been so many conversations, especially at
the forum, is about women's health and gender equity. So it was coined
as tequity and women have to have equity in you know, they have to
have a seat at the table at every instance. Also, the fact was
that half the world's population forty nine point seven percent of the eight billion,
is actually women. But research is not skewed completely towards a fifty to fifty
partnership, and I think that we more focus on research which will treat not
only the women relate to diseases, but all encompassing diseases, maybe cardiovascular or
you know, the authopedic diseases. I think this came into a lot of
focus at that time, and so tequity became very important for us. The
lack of skill, manpower, and it's a global shortage. We just do
not have enough doctors and nurses to heal the world. So using technology,
you know, how could we help them access So I think digital learning tools,
training tools had a great focus. Apollo did it during COVID that within
a span of two weeks we were able to train about one hundred and fifty
thousand workers workforce on ventilator management because you know, while there was a shortage
of ventilators, even if there were ventilators, we didn't have enough people to
be able to use it. And I think this kind of took the work
global fancy, and there's been a lot of training small modules, but for
healthcare workers, for aging, for the aging population, for bedside care,
and for multiple other requirements. So I think that was again part of the
G twenty presidency. A strong focus on AI and digital I think got discussed
in every fora and we know that, you know, health is a very
strong backbone, and so AI and health digital reach and health was a huge
focus. We know that the NCD scilled forty one million people each year and
it's seventy four percent of all the debts globally, and so the awareness on
NCDs, dealing with NCDs and the anti microbial resistance. I think the AMR
again was a huge focus and G twenty is looking for solutions for that.
The one initiative which was very intrinsic to our part of the world was the
focus on alternate medicine systems and a ur Veda and all the other healthcare systems
and how could we come out with integrative healthcare. So maybe we could do
the diagnosis using high tech, but can we use these ancient systems of medicine
for areas where it's not really required to use very strong allopathic drugs, So
I think that was one of our discussion points also, but more than anything
else, it was about collaborating, collaborating to give access to the underserved,
whether it was financial or geographic, collect access. How do we make health
systems more accountable for the outcomes which are so important to us, and then
how do we collaborate and to be able to quickly turn around the things which
have been challenging us in the future. So I think all these discussions were
useful during the G twenty and Apollo paid played a very intrinsic part of that
as part of the leadership team. It's wonderful. Thank you so much.
And you focused a little in your comments about the digitization of healthcare and worry.
I'd love to come to you on that topic. Phillips certainly has been
a leader across the world and very focused here at the World Economic Forum on
these topics, including value in healthcare. I wonder if you could give us
your perspectives on how these tools can help us be prepared for any future crisis
our healthcare systems might face. Yeah. Sure, So I think we are
very concerned about access to care in general. I think we saw that as
a challenge when you have a cris is like COVID or any kind of infectious
disease that could come after. But even today, actually we lose more patients
to cardic disease in a year than we have lost to COVID, and that
is also because we cannot operate at capacity anymore. And if I look at
the productivity of the healthcare system, why are we not as productive as we
can be, is because actually the learning agility and the adaptability to what is
possible is not yet fully there. And we saw actually in COVID what is
possible if you look at it systemically. And what I mean with systemically,
if you look to what technology can do. We can scan three times as
many patients. If you use AI now on an MRI, we can actually
predict within twenty four hours, even within two weeks if a cardiac arrest will
happen. But you need to have the clinical practice to adopt these technologies.
You also need to have the financial system to support and reimburse some of these
new practices, and then you need to have the regulatory system that actually allows
this to be adopted. So if you have these four lining up, then
actually you get massive change and adoption, and we sort of with COVID.
Unfortunately, what we also have seen actually there's backtracking, so funding is going
away from some of the digital technology or remote kind of services that we were
providing. Some of the regulary frameworks are becoming more contingent in terms of how
you deal with data and instead of what data can allow for So I think
for us, as we keep pushing a technology boundary is a lot possible,
and we talk a lot about that in AI and it's not truck it's what
we can do day to day in the workflow of healthcare. But we need
to work together to actually really get that massive change going and that's something we
are very passionate about and these kind of forums help to actually mobilize the whole
system integraally wonderful. Thank you and her excellency. I'd love to give you
the last question in our time together today as Brazil takes on the presidency of
the G twenty, tell us about some of the investments that you see that
will be made in terms of helping us address these issues of health system preparedness.
Well, so I had mentioned before regarding preparedness in light of possible emergencies.
I think, first of all, we need to be able to strengthen
our healthcare systems. That's the first point that investment should be for primary care.
But I think more and more we understand the importance of coordinating the entire
health system, so being able to strengthen that aspect. And second, we
need to have better equity in terms of science, technology and innovation. I'm
just going to give you a brief example. During the pandemic in Brazil,
I participated in the specific initiative as president of THEO Cruz which was to high
and develop well, which was to contract the vaccine with Oxford through in agreement
that we had with Astrosenica, we had the opportunity to incorporate the technology that
was being used there and develop it in our country. So this is very
important and during the G twenty presidency, we want to strengthen such partnerships both
locally, regionally, but also globally. A third aspect that has to do
with preparedness is strengthening our surveillance systems, so better integrating data, integrating all
the knowledge that the information that we have from from primary care. Preparedness has
to do. In my opinion, with science, technology and innovation. We
need to consider that ninety percent of patents are concentrated in ten percent of the
countries, so this is something that maybe we need to consider and try and
change. One other issue that has to deal with this aspect is being able
to strengthen supply chain that are more local and also strengthen cooperation between G twenty
countries and develop multilateralism with the strengthening of organizations such as the w HL.
Also, in line with the concept of preparedness and preparation, we have included
the idea of integrating data. In order to do that, we need to
improve our digital systems. So during the G twenty presidency we propose the topic
of equity and access to health, but also the use of digital health and
the strengthening of these systems. And recently I mentioned this before. In Brazil
we published a report by the Brazilian Academy of Medicine that assessed the role of
international intelligence of artificial intelligence in the health system. So all the positive aspects,
all the way from diagnosis that can come from applying this technology, but
also all the way to integrating data. And we also have concerns about education
and being able to develop these technologies in our own countries, in developing countries.
So I think those are the main aspects that I want to emphasize.
Wonderful, thank you and certainly a bold agenda. And I think I feel
very comforted in knowing that all of these leaders and doctor Tadros who had to
leave for another engagement, are all very focused on these issues. And the
World Economic Forum, again, I would like to just say, is a
hub for all of this global collaboration to happen together. So thank to thank
doing to each of the panelists for your participation, and thank to you all
for attending today. Final thoughts. We have all seen different sci fi things
where they where they have doctors tapping into or should I say an artificial intelligence
and doctor tapping into this huge database of information about the human anatomy and how
to deal with symptoms enailment of the human anatomy. What if what was proposed
at the World Economic Forum by this panel could be that? What if?
What is what this panel is proposing in building builds a database that so many
doctors can tap into and get information that it shared information, freely shared information.
It doesn't have to be paid for, so that they could save millions,
possibly more lives from a health crisis. Isn't it worth building? Isn't
a database that doctors can just tap into and share minds about the symptoms of
how to deal with a disease. Isn't it worth building it so that we
can save in better lives? There are some things out there that some conditions
out there that go completely unsolved that for an example, a baby was born
and it had a condition that they actually named after that baby because nor the
baby had it before that, and limited information about about the conditions that this
baby has also limited that person's life. What if a database could be created
or a network could be created where doctors chime in from around the world so
that they can figure out what is ailing a person, a child, a
baby. Isn't it worth building? And isn't it worth ensuring that the supplies,
the medication, the treatments are available to anyone in the world, rather
they are in a developed a underdeveloped country. Just something to think about before
he say ya or a to what was proposed to buy this particular panel at
the World Economic Forum, Thank you for listening to us today and please find
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