Event Summary: What it will take to stop the next pandemic and meet our global health goals

Global health leaders, researchers, policymakers, and scientists gathered last week to discuss lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic, explore other pressing global health challenges, set global health funding priorities, and share cutting- edge advances and best practices at the 18th annual Grand Challenges meeting.

This year’s meeting opened on October 23rd in Brussels with a fictional pandemic containment simulation. Current and former ministers of health and health experts from Angola, India, Germany, Liberia, Nigeria, Singapore, Rwanda, Senegal, and the United States participated in the exercise and grappled with the challenge of preventing another global pandemic, which requires making rapid and deeply consequential decisions with limited information.

Dr. Tom Inglesby, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, shared a few key takeaways from the exercise with a panel of experts later in the week. Even among leaders who lived through COVID and led through COVID, Dr. Ingelsby said, there remains “opposing and even contrasting views on some really fundamental and important policy decisions.” Another challenge the exercise revealed, said Dr. Inglesby, is the need for a large reserve of pandemic expertise – a global pandemic corps – able to fly in and help countries in need during such a crisis.

“The COVID-19 pandemic took all countries by surprise,” Senegalese President Macky Sall told attendees. “And has indeed shown us how unprepared we still are to face certain health challenges.”

The clear message from the exercise: countries that invest in pandemic preparedness response teams and protocols can better respond to such challenges, stop the spread, and avoid health system collapse.

The four-day meeting, from October 23-26, was hosted by Global Grand Challenges and the European Commission, and co- sponsored by Grand Challenges Canada, USAID, Wellcome, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, featured a keynote address by World Health Organization Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus who called the lightening-fast development of COVID vaccines a “stunning scientific triumph.”

Ursula von der Leyen, president of the EU Commission, focused on lessons from the pandemic in her keynote and called the development of COVID vaccines a “miracle.” She cited progress in preparing for the next pandemic including the EU’s support for efforts in Ghana, Rwanda, Senegal, and South Africa to establish manufacturing capacity for MRNA vaccines to “manufacture vaccines in Africa for Africa.” The EU is supporting similar efforts in Latin America, she said.

Valerie Nkamgang Bemo, deputy director, global development - emergency response at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, in another keynote, called for “inclusive innovation” – meaning that humanitarian organizations, scientific community, and local communities most proximate to the challenge must all work together.

Many sessions and speakers at the meeting focused on a variety of pandemic-related topics including: a session on Global Immunology and Immune Sequencing for Epidemic Response, an effort to support local detection, evaluation, and monitoring for new variants; Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s President of Global Health Trevor Mundel’s keynote, which included a call for wastewater-based surveillance of pathogens and emerging threats; and a roundtable discussion on strengthening the participation of African stakeholders in the coordination of research funding for pandemic preparedness in Africa.

Another strong theme of the conference was building global partnerships, with panels and discussions focused on building and strengthening a more inclusive model of partnerships to more fully develop and leverage the world’s scientific talent. Such a model would anchor work to address the most pressing global health and development challenges around investigators and implementers who are closest to the problems and have the knowledge and perspective to solve them.

The plenary session focused on the impact of humanitarian crises on health and the importance of innovation and research and development in a rapidly changing world.

The event also included discussions on other global health priorities including improving women and girls’ nutrition. In a panel covered by Exemplars News, experts from around the world discussed how health leaders must recognize adolescence as a critical window of opportunity for improving health and education outcomes for adolescent girls and their children. Much has been written about the need to improve nutrition during a child’s first 1,000 days. Experts participating in the panel discussed what happens when the first 1,000 days of a child’s life occurs during its mother’s adolescence – which is often the case in low- and middle-income countries.

Another session focused on research findings on Senegal’s success improving vaccine delivery from Exemplars in Global Health researchers. The Exemplars initiative harnesses data-driven approaches to guide public health interventions and supports decision making in Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa, and South Asia. Participants discussed bridging the gap between research results and interventions on the ground, with an emphasis on improving knowledge sharing between countries.

One scientific track explored advancing drug discovery for global health in four major areas: genomics in Africa, drug discovery in Africa, non-hormonal contraceptives, and pandemic preparedness.

Other panels and discussions included: a spotlight on the work of the Global Health Discovery Collaboratory which works to improve access to innovative technologies to advance global health; understanding the role of the gut microbiome in newborn nutrition and other global health challenges; new insights for addressing antimicrobial resistance; novel approaches for reducing climate change’s impact on health; and youth-led approaches for addressing mental health; and a discussion on the potential of monoclonal antibodies and other biologics to address unmet needs in infectious disease and inequity in global access to these important drugs.

Click here to sign up and log in for a full list of sessions. Videos of many sessions can be accessed here.