Closing notes at Ministerial Meeting on Foreign Policy and Global Health

Check against delivery

Brazil, France, Indonesia, Sengal, South Africa, Thailand and Norway have appreciated the interest demonstrated here today. The interventions at this Round Table has demonstrated health as a unifying factor, showing how the global health agenda can mobilise foreign policy alliances across divides that we often face, and different from the more traditional interest groups.  

The purpose of the meeting was to give visibility to an agenda which does not have the attention it needs from foreign ministers and to invite more ministers to engage - with any one or all of us  - to make foreign policy serve global health.  

Global health and health security is gaining political momentum. Foreign policy must capture this opportunity to be relevant and respond. The perspectives presented here from such a variety of countries have clearly validated the issues and the agenda so far taken forward by this initiative. It is reasonable to conclude that the meeting has confirmed the significance and value added of global health as an agenda for foreign policy. 

The way forward may lend itself to three levels of response: 

I. Overall: Make the health impact of foreign policy visible among political leaders.

• We need to make foreign policy more health sensitive and health responsive, and the first step is to root this agenda across departments in our own ministries
• We must act on foreign and domestic policies that have negative impact on survival 

II. More specifically: Put a focus on some specific policy areas where we together can add concrete and substantial value

• Areas dependent on policy changes and advances that can overcome major bottlenecks for achieving the health related Millennium Goals, such as we have pointed out with reference to trade (pharmaceuticals and technologies), migration and health workforce issues
• Areas that now are not given the attention required, where a concrete focus can drive change, such as
  • development and use of health indicators to better assess peace and reconstruction processes
  • roadmaps for health recovery as a peacemaking tool
  • more empirical knowledge of the effect of health intervention at different stages in conflicts  

III. In addition: Capture the opportunities for applying a “health lense” (giving visibility to health impact)  to ongoing intergovernmental processes, several of them right ahead of us the next months, such as

• related to WHO processes on trade, patents and innovation and the challenge virus sharing and applications of the international health regulations
• related to the preparations leading up to the Bali conference on climate 

Next steps:

• The expert group of our seven core countries will continue to meet and develop ways to serve this process.
• We see ahead of us a conference together with WHO in Geneva next spring.

I believe that we can provide a start to building a standing capacity that will place foreign policy in the service of global health and public health security. You are invited to be part of that effort.