Strengthening national public health institutes: Fiocruz’s perspective To advance global health security, countries must invest in local production and empower national public health institutes, drawing on science, innovation and cooperation to build better-prepared health systems
Mario Santos Moreira, president, Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (Fiocruz), Paulo Marchiori Buss, former president, and João Miguel Estephanio
T he Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (Fiocruz) is a state-owned science and technology organisation and a leading Brazilian pharmaceutical producer. It plays a central role in formulating and implementing health policies aimed at ensuring equitable access to health in all its dimensions. Grounded in the constitutional principle of health as a universal right and a state obligation, it seeks to strengthen Brazil’s public health system, which serves over 200 million people, and to foster access through innovation, services and production, an immense challenge in a country as uneven and vast as Brazil. For 125 years, Fiocruz has transformed knowledge into life-saving action through education, surveillance, research, innovation, hospital services and the industrial production of vaccines, medicines, diagnostics and advanced therapies. This complex system of science and technology has built critical preparedness capacities thanks to hard learning during the Covid-19 pandemic. This has helped Brazil predict and respond to health emergencies and placed Fiocruz at the centre of global discussions on prevention, preparedness and response, in close coordination with Brazil’s Ministry of Health and the World Health Organization. Two political choices stand out as particularly impactful for advancing global health security: establishing mechanisms to coordinate global efforts on local production and reinforcing the role of national public health institutes. Fiocruz, as Brazil’s national public health institute, drawing on its institutional experience from national initiatives and international cooperation, is particularly well positioned to advance both agendas, under the WHO’s guidance and through collaboration with international organisations. This has enabled it to play a strategic role within Brazil’s presidencies of the G20 in 2024 and BRICS in 2025. In the G20, Fiocruz is part of the Brazilian delegation to the Health Working Group. In 2024, Fiocruz contributed to Brazil’s efforts on the Global Alliance against
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Health: A Political Choice – The Future of Health in a Fractured World
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