A letter by our Chairman Alan Donnelly, Convenor of The G20 Health and Development Partnership, to G20 Health and Finance Ministers and G20 Leader’s following the outcomes of the 3rd joint Ministerial Meeting in Rome on 29th October today and ahead of the G20 Leader’s summit this weekend.
Your Excellencies,
On behalf of the G20 Health and Development Partnership I want to express our thanks for the leadership of Italy this year, and in ensuring a concrete outcome from the Joint Finance and Health Ministers meeting today.
The most important strategic decision is the creation of the new G20 Joint Finance-Health Task Force. The G20 HDP proposed this initiative three years ago, as we believed, even prior to the COVID-19 pandemic that there was a direct link between the performance of the economy and the investment in healthcare systems including pandemic preparedness.
The Task Force must not become another talking shop. It must have the same impact on Health that the Financial Stability Board has had on financial resilience.
We welcome the deepening commitment to the WHO, which of course requires sustainable funding at a higher level.
The new architecture must establish, beyond the funding of the ACT-A next year, a new funding mechanism funded and replenished by Governments which can invest and intervene when the Task Force is alerted to a new global health challenge.
The Task Force must also promote a robust multilateral surveillance procedure that both monitors the emerging risks and the scale of the annual national and regional health investments.
The G20 Health and Development Partnership welcomes the proposal from Rt Hon. Gordon Brown at todays Ministerial meeting for countries holding stockpiles of vaccines, beyond their own immediate requirements, to make these available urgently to COVAX for distribution to the most vulnerable countries.
Today’s outcomes from the Joint G20 Finance and Health Ministers meeting is a major step in recognising the importance of keeping our citizens healthy, which helps to keep our economies strong we urge the Heads of Government to require the immediate implementation of today’s declaration and that the Italian and Indonesian Governments will ensure the commitment to establish the Task Force before the end of 2021.
Yours sincerely,
Alan Donnelly