PRESENTER

• Olusoji Adeyi, Former Director of Global Practice, Health, Nutrition & Population, World Bank

FEATURING

• Dean Jamison, Emeritus Professor, University of California, San Francisco
• Agnès Soucat, Head of Health and Social Protection, Agence Française de Développement
• Prashant Yadav, Senior Fellow, Center for Global Development

MODERATOR

• Amanda Glassman, Executive Vice President and Senior Fellow, Center for Global Development

ABOUT THE EVENT

The COVID-19 pandemic has showcased the large vulnerabilities of the global health architecture and weaknesses in the resilience of national health systems. It has also reinvigorated a debate about the right way to prioritize and use development assistance for health (DAH). Should it focus strictly on global capacity for infectious disease surveillance, global governance and policy coordination, and R&D for new health tools? Or should it also be used to subsidize the purchase and delivery of medicines, vaccines, and preventative health technologies and continue investing in national health systems? In an ideal world with infinite resources, the answer is both, but with constraints and new demands, DAH prioritization requires a careful rethink. There has also been growing discontent in low-and middle-income countries about the architecture for global health and how it can be more inclusive and effective.

Olusoji Adeyi highlights some of these issues in his new book Global Health in Practice: Investing Amidst Pandemics, Denial of Evidence, and Neo-dependency. This event will start with a short presentation, highlighting key themes from Adeyi’s book, followed by a discussion with senior leaders in health economics and financing, which will explore how we invest today in the global health commons and how it connects and does not connect with national health systems; the growing role of regional institutions; and the issues around external finance for recurrent costs of provision of basic, cost-effective health technologies and services. The panel will also delve into needed reforms in the global health architecture.

If you have questions for our panelists, please submit them to events@cgdev.org, tweet @CGDev #CGDTalks, or submit your comments via YouTube.