Over the past four years, the COVID-19 pandemic has drastically disrupted daily life, severely stressed health systems across the globe and exposed stark inequalities in managing global health crises. It has revealed significant shortcomings in disease surveillance and data sharing and highlighted the urgent need to strengthen global health research. The strategy of intensive containment of the COVID-19 pandemic often came at the expense of managing other infectious diseases, such as Tuberculosis and HIV, leading to uneven and nationally focused solutions.

The need to develop a more equitable and unified strategy for global health, particularly in preparing for and responding to future pandemics has become apparent. The upcoming webinar, “Catalysing Change: A Global Health Approach in the Wake of Pandemics”, brings together experts from national and international health bodies, the political arena, and the pharmaceutical industry to address the pressing issues of global health politics and pandemic prevention. The webinar will specifically focus on ensuring equitable access to medications and vaccines, fostering global health research, and improving surveillance and data-sharing mechanisms. It takes on the conference brief “Global Health Approach for Infectious Diseases – A Proposal for the Next Decade”, a joint publication by the national academies of Ethiopia, Germany, Senegal, and South Africa, which resulted from the workshop “Infectious Diseases beyond COVID-19” in Berlin on 23 and 24 May 2023.

This event is part of the Leopoldina International Virtual Panel Series which the Leopoldina initiated in July 2020 as a virtual format for global scientific exchange. Leopoldina’s International Relations Department organises this series in cooperation with its global partners. It offers a virtual room for the global scientific community to convene and for the interested public to join the dialogue with scientists.