Leaders from the world’s largest economies gather this week in Bali, Indonesia, for the G20 Leaders’ Summit to discuss themes on the global economy, health and climate. Over the past year, we at the Tony Blair Institute (TBI) have been honoured to support Indonesia in its presidency as the first South-East Asian country to host the G20. In addition to providing on-the-ground support for delivery of Indonesia’s G20 agendas on global health, and sustainable and inclusive growth, Tony Blair served as a member of the International Advisory Caucus (IAC) of the B20: the official G20 forum for dialogue with the global business community.
As the Covid-19 pandemic’s effects continue to be felt around the world, global health understandably featured as a principal element of Indonesia’s “Recover Together, Recover Stronger” presidential agenda. TBI’s dedicated team in Indonesia worked with the Ministry of Health to deliver its ambitious objectives of strengthening the global-health architecture with advice on navigating complex technical negotiations and by providing strategic communications support to the health minister and his team. We commend Health Minister Budi and Finance Minister Sri Mulyani on their achievement of establishing the global Pandemic Fund, which has attracted over USD 1.4 billion in pledges.
TBI’s support to the government on the G20 process was complemented by our partnership and engagement with the B20 to co-create actionable recommendations from industry for the G20 Leaders’ Summit on how to make global health care more equitable. In our role as a founding member of the Global Health Security Consortium (GHSC), TBI has been central to the delivery of this overarching agenda. Working with the B20 and GHSC over the past eight months, we hosted policy dialogues, mapped lessons learned, and developed actionable policy recommendations with inputs from industry, governments and the global health community.
These efforts culminated in the adoption of GHSC’s global One Shot campaign as a B20 legacy project. One Shot sets out a roadmap to combat preventable diseases worldwide that draws on innovations in vaccines and preventative injectables, and builds on progress made in response to Covid-19. This vision for a disease-prevention programme that is “always on” would save millions of lives and billions of dollars, addressing health inequalities and leading to more prosperous, healthy and resilient societies. Now is the time to transform the global health infrastructure, making it more equitable and also ensuring the world is prepared for the next pandemic.
Going forward, One Shot will continue to engage stakeholders across industry, governments and global health to collaborate on an approach to improve equity of access to existing and emerging vaccines and injectables worldwide. This will include exploring opportunities to improve delivery of vaccinations through digital health infrastructure, to expand and diversify vaccine manufacturing and to deliver clinical trials for novel vaccines within lower- and middle-income countries (LMICs).
Yesterday, on the opening day of the B20 Summit, we were honoured to be featured in the B20 Legacy Ceremonial Session and launch the global One Shot campaign in front of a 1,500-strong crowd of global business leaders. Today, Tony Blair will continue our message and address B20 participants on “Investing in Inclusive Growth for a Resilient Future”.
This is only the start for our exciting vision for the future of global health and our support to the G20 and B20. We look forward to seeing our ambitions to promote an inclusive and prosperous globalised world through to the next G20 and B20 under India’s presidency, as they champion the “One Earth, One Family, One Future” agenda.
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