Reprioritizing essential medicines in our changing world?

A Team Europe event on the sidelines of World Health Summit 2025

You are cordially invited to join Team Europe Initiative AU-EU Health Partnerships for a panel discussion on reprioritizing access to essential medicines in the context of changing global health challenges.

Image

EVENT DETAILS

• Date: Monday, October 13, 2025, 7h30 – 8h55 (panel starts at 7h50)

• Co-hosted by: The European Commission, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Spain, and Sweden

• Location: PESTANA BERLIN TIERGARTEN, Stülerstrasse 6, 10787 Berlin (4-minute walk to World Health Summit) 

• Please RSVP: Alexis Ditkowsky (alexis.ditkowsky@giz.de) and Laura Moreno Reyes (laura.morenoreyes@enabel.be) from the Team Europe Support Structure MAV+

CONTEXT

2027 will mark the 50th anniversary of the publication of the first WHO Model List of Essential Medicines. The Essential Medicines list has been described as among the most influential public health achievements of the last quarter of the 20th century. There is currently intensive debate about the role of the Model List, as a process and a model product. Important choices will have to be made about its future.  

The concept of “essential medicines” allows us to steer decisions in favour of equity and affordability, which are guiding principles for Team Europe and Team Africa’s collaboration on health. Working together, we have brought together a broad coalition to progress towards Universal Health Coverage, strengthen health systems, improve health security, and increase access to health products, including essential medicines, in Africa as part of the Global Gateway strategy. 

According to the latest biennial report on universal health coverage, in 2021 around 4.5 billion people or half the world’s population had no access to basic health services, and progress has stalled since 2019. At the same time, the proportion of households facing catastrophic out-of-pocket health spending has risen steadily, from 12% in 2005 to nearly 17% in 2019 driven in large part by the cost of medicines.  

Changing priorities in global health and foreign policy will further influence these statistics. This panel discussion explores the question on how global tools, regional mechanisms, and national authorities can work together to improve access to essential medicines, particularly in the context of changing global health challenges.  

This question will be addressed from a global level by a senior global health expert working on the new Lancet Commission on Essential Medicines and by a senior officer from a national health authority, while additional health experts will zoom in on specific areas which are affected by the changing policies and priorities: sexual and reproductive health commodities and anti-microbial resistance (AMR). 

OBJECTIVES OF THE EVENT

This side event aims to explore: 

• How global tools, regional mechanisms, and national authorities can work together to improve access to essential medicines, particularly in the context of changing global health challenges 

• The critical role of essential medicines in sexual and reproductive health and rights and health security

GUIDING QUESTIONS

• What are the most urgent gaps in access to essential medicines today? How can we work together to mitigate those gaps? 

• What strategies or partnerships could help mitigate the impact of global disruptions and safeguard access to essential medicines, even in times of political and financial uncertainty? 

SPEAKERS

The discussion will open with remarks from Martin Seychell, Deputy Director General in the European Commission's Directorate-General for International Partnerships.

We will then be joined by the following panelists:

• Hans V. Hogerzeil, MD, PhD, DSc, FRCP Ed (Netherlands, 1951) is emeritus Professor of Global Health and the Right to Health at Groningen University (Netherlands) and Co-Chair of the Lancet Commission on Accelerating Progress on Essential Medicines. He is Chairman of the Expert Review Committee of the Access to Medicine Index. From 2004 to 2011 he was WHO Director for Essential Medicines and Pharmaceutical Policies in Geneva.

• Arshnee Moodley is a microbiologist working on AMR in animals for 20 years. She is the leader of the CGIAR Antimicrobial Resistance Hub and AMR Team lead at the International Livestock Research Institute in Nairobi, Kenya. She is jointly appointed as an Associate Professor at the Department of Veterinary and Animal Sciences, University of Copenhagen, Denmark.

• Ogechi Onuoha is the Programme Director at MSI Nigeria, where she leads the design, development, and implementation of programmes that enable access to sexual and reproductive health across Nigeria’s 36 states and Abuja. These programmes also support national and state governments in enabling policy change, service delivery, health systems strengthening, and sustainable demand and norm change.

• Mosoka Fallah is the Acting Director of the Science and Innovation Directorate at Africa CDC, where he is leading transformative efforts to strengthen health security and foster innovation across the African continent. With a distinguished career in global health and a passion for scientific advancement, Dr. Fallah is dedicated to reshaping Africa’s research and development (R&D) and clinical trial landscape through a strategic focus on financing, coordination and governance, and human capacity development.

The discussion will be moderated by Laura Moreno Reyes, Team Europe Support Structure MAV+ Expert working on access to health products.

AGENDA AND FORMAT

The side-event is in-person and will be conducted in English (no interpretation). There is no option for remote participation. 

• 7h30 – 7h45: Arrival, registration, coffee, pastries

• 7h45 – 8h50: Opening remarks, panel discussion, Q&A

• 8h50 – 8h55: Closing and departure

~~~

ABOUT THE TEAM EUROPE INITIATIVE AU-EU HEALTH PARTNERSHIPS 

The Team Europe Initiative AU-EU Health Partnerships brings different European actors together around a focused thematic area in partnership with African stakeholders. Thematic areas include: 

• Manufacturing and access to vaccines, medicines and health technologies 

• Sexual and reproductive health and rights 

• Health security 

• Digital health 

• Public health institutes 

Health is central to the ambitions of Africans and to Europeans. As the COVID-19 pandemic made clear, no one is healthy unless everyone is healthy. 

Conflict, insecurity, disease outbreaks, constrained funding for health systems, limited local manufacturing of health products, risks related to substandard and falsified products and climate change exacerbate existing healthcare inequities. 

Health systems cannot function effectively without ensuring equitable access to quality health products and services, which, in turn, is a critical part of achieving Universal Health Coverage. 

The core of the Team Europe partnership is: 

• Strategic and coordinated partnerships, aligning its approach and activities with African priorities in tight collaboration with African partners at the continental, regional, national and local level. 

• Technical expertise, including decades of success working on a wide range of topics relevant to Africa’s ambitions in health and security, including economic and political integration, health product manufacturing, research cooperation, the provision of primary healthcare, SRHR and more. Team Europe has deep experience of institutional collaboration at the regional level with the EU and regional economic commissions. 

• Diversified funding and pooled resources, including grants, loans, investments packages, budget support and blended finance as well as instruments for de-risking that encourage private investment. Funding is provided through contributions from the EU budget, EU Member States, the European Investment Bank and European development banks through a mix of joint and bilateral projects. 

• Commitment to the right to health, acknowledging health as a fundamental human right, emphasizing its importance for sustainable development and endorsing principles of gender equality, equity and human rights. 

The European Commission, Belgium, Czechia, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, and Sweden are members of the Team Europe Initiative AU-EU Health Partnerships.