Artificial intelligence promises huge efficiency gains for strained health systems, but algorithmic surveillance in long-term care systems also introduces profound ethical dilemmas. In response, the World Health Organization (WHO) has unveiled a comprehensive consultation draft on global long-term care standards to ensure digital innovation is balanced with fundamental human rights. Across the world, countries are […] Continue reading ->
The growing impact of climate change on respiratory health, including through longer pollen seasons, wildfires and more exterme heat, was the focus of an high-level event on the margins of the 79th World Health Assembly (WHA) in Geneva, organized by the Geneva Health Forum and Health Diplomacy Alliance. The event followed on the heels of a […] Continue reading ->
Three emerging threats to health: the commercial, digital, and climate determinants of health played centre stage at an event 40 years after a WHO charter shifted the focus of health from individual lifestyle choices to broader social and environmental determinants. Commercial formula company practices are just one case study of how structural factors like marketing […] Continue reading ->
As Europe grapples with shifting demographics and an influx of migration, researchers are mapping how undocumented migrants navigate the administrative cracks of the continent’s healthcare systems – helping to fill a critical data gap identified by the World Health Organization. Inside the neoclassical venue of La Pastorale in Geneva, around 30 participants from six European […] Continue reading ->
As USAID programmes funding vital treatments for HIV/AIDS, malaria, maternal and child health, and other critical needs were imploding across Africa last year, a for-profit social enterprise startup geared up for its first real test. Using medicines procurement as its lever, the Swiss-based startup Axmed called for a radical reboot of national systems — to […] Continue reading ->
Financial innovation is a key, underused tool that can be mustered to strengthen humanitarian outreach in crisis settings, while also strengthening public health systems over the long term, according to a new report published by The Geneva Health Forum. “New sources of financing are developing, breaking with the traditional vision of charitable action financed by […] Continue reading ->
Only 12 more negotiating days remain until WHO member states hit the May 2026 deadline for an agreement on a Pathogen Access and Benefit Sharing (PABS) system, as part of the new Pandemic Agreement adopted at last year’s World Health Assembly (WHA). The gap between developed and developing blocs of countries remains large, and progress […] Continue reading ->
The post-pandemic decline in infection-prevention practices, along with the broader crash in global health finance, are undermining progress against antimicrobial resistance – one of the planet’s most urgent health threats. At a recent panel discussion co-hosted by the Geneva Health Forum (GHF), leading experts from WHO, academia, biotech, and patient advocacy warned that national AMR plans […] Continue reading ->
After 2024 became the warmest year on record, with temperatures rising 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels for the first time ever, humanity is “moving into the unknown,” said Andy Haines, professor of environmental change and public health at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. “We are now above the Paris Agreement’s preferred target […] Continue reading ->
“We don’t need faster horses, we need a new model of global health,” says Professor Helen Rees, who received the World Health Organization’s (WHO) 2025 Dr Lee Jong-wook Memorial Prize on Friday for her “outstanding contribution to public health”. “If there isn’t going to be money, we shouldn’t be trying to run the same things […] Continue reading ->