July.26.2021 KIP Forum "The tide of global health: the change of global health paradigm by COVID-19 "

Ms. Harumi Sakamoto

Profile:

Sapporo Medical University School of Medicine the University of Tokyo Graduate School of International Health Policy Department Doctoral Course. After working at St. Luke's International Hospital (internist), worked at the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare. Harvard School of Public Health Master's degree. Part-time lecturer at the Department of Tropical Studies and International Environment, Tokyo Women's Medical University.

【Speech and Q&A】
In the lecture by Professor Sakamoto, she explained how the concept of global health was born and have spread on a global scale. Before the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, many of us might think about a refugee camp when we hear “global health.” However, from 1993, the concept that healthcare was an investment target, not a cost, was born, and people have started dealing with medical care from development perspective. After that, the MDGs, which set eight goals to be achieved by 2015, and the SDGs, which set 17 goals to be achieved by 2030, also included goals related to people's health. In particular, SDGs should show specific target values for a wider variety of illnesses, from infectious diseases such as AIDS and malaria to non-infectious diseases such as ischemic heart disease and stroke, and mental health.
Next, Dr. Sakamoto taught us that the types of players (investors / implementers of measures) dealing with global health is increasing. For instance, UN agencies such as WHO and UNICEF, public-private partnerships such as The Global Fund, bilateral cooperation mainly in the form of assistance to developing countries by developed countries, and independent or private organizations such as Doctors Without Borders or the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation are global health players. Furthermore, new powers such as China and India are emerging. Professor Sakamoto thinks, in the future, these players of the global health act for not only humane reasons but also economic and political reasons by taking their strengths and weaknesses, and sometimes the balance of interest into account. During the Q & A session, there was questions that considered global health from various perspectives, such as vaccine delivery, data sharing, and innovation in each country's vaccine in the pandemic of the COVID-19.

【Group discussion and grand discussion】
In this forum, unlike the usual discussion of KIP, a role-playing discussion was held provided by Professor Sakamoto. Participants became on behalf of developed, emerging or developing countries, and developing countries try to acquire vaccine through negotiations with developed and emerging countries to development and supply of infectious diseases that have occurred there. At the end of the discussion, we applied a specific country name and discussed the same theme. Through these, I realized that there are various interests that cannot be centrally talked about in the issue of global health in the actual international community.

【Personal remarks】
Through this forum, I realized that global health is a problem that cannot be talked about in a unified manner, involving the interests of various countries. Now that humankind has faced the importance of health and the difficulty of maintaining it due to the spread of the new coronavirus, I felt that we should recognize this fact and act to achieve global health.

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(Hironori Kitano, Keio University, Commerce, 4th year)

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