In October, global health professionals gathered in Berlin for the World Health Summit (12–14 October), under the theme “Taking Responsibility for Health in a Fragmenting World”. KIT Institute Advisor Harry Coleman was in attendance and sent us his dispatch from the summit.

The World Health Summit (WHS) is an annual event hosted by Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin. You could think of it as a sister event to the World Health Assembly (WHA); the WHO’s annual decision-making forum where countries get together and decide the WHO’s priorities. Unlike the WHA, however, the Summit doesn’t decide any policy. It’s more a conference where the world’s current global health problems and solutions are discussed, bringing together around 3,000-4,000 people every year from politics, science, the private sector, and civil society.

I was at the Summit as an attendee—benefitting from KIT’s last-minute invitation by Elucid, and having the least weekend plans. The leitmotif for the Summit this year did not sugarcoat the challenge the sector faces: Taking Responsibility For Health in a Fragmenting World. As the self-proclaimed flagship conference for global health, what might this theme and the sessions it organised say about the current state of global health?

Harry Coleman and Alhadi Osman, Senior Health Advisor at Save the Children UK and KIT Alumnus.

The backdrop for the entire Summit was the cuts to Official Development Assistance (ODA or, aid) made by many governments around the world, most notably the stripping of USAID with a reported 80% of its projects terminated. Who would be ‘taking responsibility’ for global health now that many traditional donor countries had retreated to their national interests? You didn’t have to look between the lines of the programme to find the answer. The answer was the private sector—and alongside it, large foundations. Often, these are the commercial and philanthropic arm of the same pharmaceutical company: Bayer, Roche, Abbott, GSK, Novo Nordisk. As my colleague Nima Yaghmaei put it: “global health’s expansionist era is over”. But is the field reshaping into something manifestly different? The private sector is obviously an important part of any health system, but it was notable there weren’t any complimentary sessions about increasing the health budgets of countries who historically receive aid; another way the ‘taking responsibility’ motif could have been interpreted.

Session during the Summit. © Harry Coleman

The other perceptible shift was the focus of the sessions themselves. The most common themes across sessions were: a new global health architecture, new partners and finance; One Health and AMR; health emergencies and the next pandemic; and AI and ‘next-gen’ data. Many ‘traditional’ global health research topics were at the margins of the programme. There was a sprinkling of noncommunicable diseases, prevention, and conflict, peace and health. There was one session where sexual and reproductive health and rights was explicitly mentioned in the title, one session on health workforce, and one session on primary healthcare systems. Are these just the topics the Summit has decided are most pressing this year, or could it also represent a shift in funding priorities? And while traditional donor countries may have less influence over the ‘global health agenda’ as they cut their ODA, does this mean recipient countries have more say if the private sector steps in?

What is becoming clear is that the conversation about who leads, who funds, and what is funded is shifting. In amongst many unanswered questions from Summit, what I’m still grappling with is whether the shift will actually unite global health actors in a ‘fragmenting world’? And, crucially, will it lead to more people receiving the healthcare they need?