WHO / HEALTH FOR ALL REPORT

STORY: WHO / WORLD HEALTH ASSEMBLY OPENING
TRT: 4:12
SOURCE: WHO
RESTRICTIONS: NONE
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH / NATS

DATELINE: 23 MAY 2023, GENEVA, SWITZERLAND / FILE

SHOTLIST:

RECENT – GENEVA, SWITZERLAND

1. Wide shot, exterior, WHO Headquarters

1. Various shots, UN Headquarters in Geneva
2. Various shots, arrivals of WHO Director-General and other dignitaries and guests
3. SOUNDBITE (English) Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General, World Health Organization (WHO):
“I asked the council, chaired by Professor Mariana Mazzucato, to rethink economic policy and practice in a way that serves health rather than the reverse. This reflects a paradigm shift in the world's economic and public health logic. “
4. Med shot, Ghebreyesus and other participants in the briefing
5. SOUNDBITE (English) Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General, World Health Organization (WHO):
“Now the council is finishing its work and publishing its final report. Out of the major 13 recommendations, a few points caught my attention. First, the report implores the world to stop using GDP as the measurement of progress. It doesn't account for the vast resources that go into unpaid work, which is often the backbone of economic and social activity.”
6. Med shot, journalists in the audience
7. SOUNDBITE (English) Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General, World Health Organization (WHO):
“It calls on countries and funding agencies to stop straitjacketing low- and middle-income countries via austerity measures which prohibit investment in health. It calls instead on financing for health to be both adequate and sustained over the long term. Third, the council noted that innovation works best when there are vibrant partnerships between the public and private sectors.”
8. Med shot, journalists in the audience
9. SOUNDBITE (English) Mariana Mazzucato, Chair, Council on the Economics of Health for All:
“So are we more prepared now than before? The report says no because we have not treated health for all seriously. We have not designed business models. We have not designed government structures. We have not designed public private partnerships to be outcomes oriented.”
10. Wide shot, Ghebreyesus and other participants in the briefing
11. SOUNDBITE (English) Jayati Gosh, Council Member, Council on the Economics of Health for All:
“We have too much money going into ill health and not enough public finance for health. How do we reverse that process? How do we actually ensure that the innovations that occur are oriented towards greater health? How do we prevent the whole gamut of other things that impact on health, the socio-economic determinants of health? How do we ensure the adequate finance for that, both public and private? How do we direct them? Mariana has written a lot about market shaping and co-creating the markets, so these are all the ideas that imbued this report.”
12. Close up, audience members
13. SOUNDBITE (English) Mariana Mazzucato, Chair, Council on the Economics of Health for All:
“Of course, we care about growth, but we need to direct that growth to be inclusive and sustainable, problem oriented, people centered, planet centered. And guess what? Ironically, we actually, I should whisper, grow more, when we do it that way, but grow with a direction.”
14. Close up, report with briefers in the background
SOUNDBITE (English) Mariana Mazzucato, Chair, Council on the Economics of Health for All:
“So really going back to issues of how we do capitalism, this is not just about, oh, throw money to the developing world. No, the developing world will benefit if we do capitalism differently, if we do corporate governance differently, if we do public private partnerships differently, if we do finance and the structures of finance differently. So, it's really a call to arms and an inspirational one. This isn't about an us versus them. This is we truly are in this together, hopefully a really rethinking a lot of these underlying structures. And again, that's also what makes our report different from previous ones.”
15. Wide shot, Ghebreyesus and other participants in the briefing
16. SOUNDBITE (English) Jayati Gosh, Council Member, Council on the Economics of Health for All:
“Preventive means you have to look at nutrition, you have to look at sanitation, you have to look at water. You have to look at pollution. You have to look at housing. You have to look at all of these different things. And so all these ministries have to be involved. But particularly finance is important because we are seeing even today as we speak, we are seeing austerity imposed in various different ways, not necessarily only on the health ministry, but in all kinds of spending that then impacts on health of the people. So in fact, finance has to be critically involved.”
17. Wide shot, Ghebreyesus and other participants in the briefing

STORYLINE:

In the first-ever report of its kind, the WHO Council on the Economics of Health for All has outlined a bold new path to reorient economies to deliver what matters - health for all.

The Council, created by WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus in November 2020 in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, and chaired by Professor Mariana Mazzucato, has spent that last two years rethinking the economy from a health for all perspective, and pushing forcefully the principle that human and planetary health must be at the heart of how we design our social, health and economic systems and policies.

The Council has put forward a bold new narrative grounded in new economic wisdom to reorient economies to deliver health for all across four interrelated themes:

1. Value - valuing and measuring what matters through new economic metrics;
2. Finance - how to finance health for all as a long-term investment, not a short-term cost;
3. Innovation - how to advance health innovation for the common good;
4. Capacity - how to strengthen dynamic public sector capacity to achieve health for all.

“Two years ago, I asked a team of the world’s leading economists and public health experts – all women – to create a paradigm shift. Now, instead of health for all being seen as the servant of economic growth, we have a roadmap for structuring economic activity in a way that will allow us to reach the goal of seeing all people with access to essential health services faster with better results,” said Dr Tedros.

“Over the past two years, the WHO Council on the Economics of Health for All has worked to craft a new economic narrative – one that transforms financing for health from an expenditure to an investment,” said the Council’s Chair, Professor Mariana Mazzucato. “We have examined the changes needed – including to the structure of patents, public-private partnerships, and budgets – to design an economy that delivers Health for All. In our final report, we call for new economic policy that is not about market fixing but about proactively and collaboratively shaping markets that prioritize human and planetary health.”

Launched today in conjunction with the Seventy-sixth World Health Assembly, the report, entitled Health for All: Transforming economies to deliver what matters (https://www.who.int/groups/who-council-on-the-economics-of-health-for-all), provides a new framework built on the above four pillars, with specific recommendations under each – drawing from the Council’s previous work.