“Health is a human right”: How the world can make up progress lost to COVID

“Health is a human right”: Can we make up progress lost to COVID? | Global Stage | GZERO Media

The state of public health in the developing world bears some deep scars from the COVID-19 pandemic. Over the past three years, immunization rates have dropped to levels not seen in three decades. 2 billion people are facing "catastrophic or impoverishing" health spending worldwide according to the World Health Organization. And governments in the Global South are taking on more and more debt at the expense of investment in health and social services.

Kate Dodson, the Vice President of Global Health Strategy at the UN Foundation, is on the frontlines of the fight to give the most vulnerable people in the world access to proper healthcare. She works to connect experts and innovators with the UN, and find resources to support their work.

She’s calling on governments to invest in basic elements of public health, including primary care access, and properly remunerating healthcare workers — the majority of whom are women, worldwide. And more fundamentally, she wants leaders to treat health as a human right that all deserve to enjoy.

More from Global Stage: https://www.gzeromedia.com/global-stage/

More from GZERO Media

Kurdish fighters from the People's Protection Units (YPG) take part in a military parade as they celebrate victory over the Islamic state, in Qamishli, Syria March 28, 2019.
REUTERS/Rodi Said

Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan threatened this week to launch attacks against Kurdish-led forces in northeastern Syria.

A ballot box is displayed inside the parliament building, a day ahead of Lebanon's parliament's attempt to elect a new head of state in downtown Beirut, Lebanon, January 8, 2025.
REUTERS/Mohamed Azakir

The crisis-wracked country needs a stable government in order to secure aid.

Listen: It's officially the new year, and 2025 will bring a whole new set of challenges as governments react to the shifting policies of the incoming Trump administration, instability in the Middle East, China’s economic weakness, and a world where the global order feels increasingly tenuous. 2025 will be a year of heightened geopolitical risks and global disorder, with the world no longer aligned with the balance of power. So what should we be paying attention to, and what’s the world’s #1 concern for the year ahead? Ian Bremmer analyzes the Eurasia Group's Top Risks of 2025 report with a panel of global experts.

Donald Trump faces reporters in the Oval Office on Sept. 11, 2020.
REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

President-elect Donald Trump is doubling down on threats that the US should take control of the Panama Canal and Greenland, and he isn’t ruling out the use of force to accomplish this. He's also taking swipes at Canada. But the relevant foreign leaders are having none of it.

Annie Gugliotta

We are heading back to the law of the jungle – where the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must. This is the G-Zero world I’ve been warning about for over a decade now – an era when no one power or group of powers is both willing and able to drive a global agenda and maintain international order.

With political instability plaguing US allies, from Canada and South Korea to Japan and Germany, 2025 promises plenty of geopolitical storms. To get you up to speed, GZERO Publisher Evan Solomon sat down with Eurasia Group’s Ian Bremmer, Cliff Kupchan, and Jon Lieber, as well as the New Yorker’s Susan Glasser, to discuss the 2025 Top Risks report.