EMPOWERING WOMEN HEALTH
Half of the countries in sub-Saharan Africa are either in debt distress or at high risk of it, spending, on average, three times more on repaying debt services than they do on health. If this is left unaddressed, it will be dangerous – not only for Africa but for the whole world. Coordinated significant relief and restructuring of debts to both public and private creditors, facilitated by improvements in banking rules in the G7 jurisdictions under which global firms operate, will be good for everyone in the world – by enabling the health security, stability and the prosperity of future generations. Among other achievements, G7 members have powered global progress towards the end of AIDS by contributing 74% of all official development assistance towards health and 89% of all international assistance for HIV. Continued action by G7 members to ensure sufficient financing for HIV, through intensified aid alongside action on debt, can enable the end of AIDS as a public health threat this decade, make sure those gains are sustained and enable the world to be ready for the pandemics to come. Alongside these health impacts, projections demonstrate that the long-term financial costs of action are vastly lower than the financial costs of inaction. FISCAL SELF-RELIANCE Second, G7 members are rightly keen to see low- and middle-income countries become more self-reliant fiscally and need to support the growth of new avenues for those countries’ domestic revenue collection. Brazil, host of November’s G20 summit in Rio de Janeiro, has placed the establishment of new taxes on the agenda as a way to source revenue that can be invested in health and other social priorities. Needs highlighted in G20 discussions, which the G7 can help advance, include taxes on the wealth and capital gains of individuals
Half of the countries in sub-Saharan Africa are either in debt distress or at high risk of it, spending, on average, three times more on repaying debt services than they do on health”
and companies to reduce inequality, with the collected revenues redeployed for social priorities such as health, HIV, child welfare, gender equality and social protection. Third, G7 members have a vital role, and a clear strategic self-interest, in making sure everyone in the world has access to the most advanced and most effective health technologies to ensure global health security. This requires support for reforms for which low- and middle-income countries have been advocating, so that intellectual property rights do not act as a barrier to access to life-saving medicine, alongside support for growing capacity in the Global South for domestic research, development and production of assured-quality health technologies. As countries gear up for the UN’s Summit for the Future in September, the Apulia Summit provides an opportunity for G7 members to demonstrate that they are ready to enable that future and help set it in motion. The health security of us all depends on cooperation for a restructuring of debt, progressive taxation and equitable access to health technologies. Such an approach is achievable, and essential, and is core to the mandate of the G7 and to the vision set out by Italy as G7 chair. Leaders have a poly-opportunity. Whether the G7 and G20 seize that opportunity will help determine whether the world successfully navigates the challenges of this decade and beyond. The health of all of us depends on it.
WINNIE BYANYIMA Winnie Byanyima is the executive director of UNAIDS and an under- secretary-general of the United Nations. A passionate and longstanding champion of social justice and gender equality, she leads the UN’s efforts to end the AIDS epidemic by 2030. She believes that health care is a human right and was an early champion of a people’s vaccine against the coronavirus that should be available and free of charge to everyone, everywhere.
X-TWITTER @Winnie_Byanyima unaids.org
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2024 — G7 ITALY: THE APULIA SUMMIT
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