World Health Summit 2025

Oooh I love Berlin! Just over 24 hours in the German capital is definitely not enough. That said, I am not one to be held back by time constraints and hotfooted it straight into the city to meet a friend for coffee. That friend, Alina, happens to be a McCain Global Leader alumni from the 2024 cohort. I've been on the Advisory Council of the McCain Institute's Global Leadership program (and no it's not "programme" cause it's American y'all) since it's inception in 2021. Alina and I had never actually met in person, but I run a communications workshop each year for the leaders on the course and Alina reached out when she heard that I was going to be in her home country! I'm a big believer in building connections and grabbing opportunities for in-person meet ups... I'm also a believer that where there's caffeine, there's a way!

Onto the reason why I was in Berlin. The city plays host to the World Health Summit every year. I was asked by Vital Strategies and Bloomberg Philanthropies to moderate a panel on "The Lifesaving Potential of Death Data". Sounds cheery, right? But, as I said at the start of the session, I can't think of a better way to honour the dead than to use the data from their death to prevent the premature death of others.

As is the norm in the Global Health space, the acronyms abound! In this case CRVS - civil registration and vital statistics - the systems of recording births, deaths and crucially causes of death around the world. Something crazy like 45 million deaths a year aren't accurately recorded. How then, is any government supposed to shape policy when it's not got the full picture of their population or the health trends at play?!

Dr Alain Labrique from WHO brought the digital/AI transformation potential, DR Chloe Harvey delved into the statistics with real world examples of the challenges and opportunities at stake. and then Dr Hafiz Chowdhury and Dr Paul Zulu gave us the perspective through the country lens of The Solomon Islands and Zambia, respectively.

Loved catching up with UICC CEO Dr Cary Adams