The Endgame for Global Health Governance Negotiations
March 22, 2024
Editors' Note
The coming months could see a major shift in the management and financing of global health.
This week, CFR Senior Fellow David P. Fidler looks at how World Health Organization member states are finalizing a pandemic agreement and amendments to international health regulations, while the What We're Reading section includes a conversation about the dozen global development funds seeking replenishments this year.
Sticking to governance, journalist Tara Haelle unpacks new projections for the global fertility rate, published this week by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation in the Lancet. Haelle reports how national governments, especially for high-income countries, will need to adjust health care and social services to cope with plummeting fertility rates.
Climate change could also determine the future of health, and scientists are exploring what motivates people to act. Stockholm-based journalist Ashley Perl outlines the findings from a new mega-study on climate language and behavior.
Let's now pivot from the future to the past. To honor World Tuberculosis Day, author and advocate Maria Smilios speaks about the disease's history through her book The Black Angels, and she explains current efforts to end the scourge. The edition wraps with a remembrance of Senator Paul Simon's Water for the World Act. His wife, Patti, explains why she is back on Capitol Hill to advocate for clean water around the world on the tenth anniversary of the legislation.
Until next week!—Nsikan Akpan, Managing Editor, and Allison Krugman, Data Editor
The world's fertility rate has more than halved since 1950, falling from 4.8 children per childbearing person to about 2.2 today across 204 countries and territories
