Accelerated development: A new era for health and life science cooperation with the Global South?

Among the issues that the COVID-19 pandemic brought to the surface, global cooperation in health research emerged as an essential requirement to prevent and tackle future outbreaks from concerted surveillance of emerging infectious diseases to drug manufacturing, knowledge transfer, data sharing and biodiversity protection. Beyond pandemic preparedness, the need for a broader, structural and sustainable North-South partnership has now become obvious. While some partnerships in the sector, such as the European and Developing Countries Clinical Trials Partnership (EDCTP), have thrived for decades, the number of parties at play and partnerships have multiplied throughout the COVID crisis. In addition, the health sector's digitalisation rush and the growing importance of AI offer enormous opportunities to deepen North-South partnerships. Moving forward, to ensure a coordinated approach, several questions need clearer answers.

The realms in which the EU can prove to be a reliable partner in health research are multiple, ranging from vaccine development to fighting antimicrobial resistance and gene editing for next-generation medicine. But to address unmet medical needs and market failure, what kind of partnerships is the EU willing to sign with partners around the world? Do the research partnerships in place envision sufficiently proactive roles for the Global South parties, both as providers and receivers of information, skills and best practices? How to proceed to ensure that research collaboration goes hand-in-hand with sustainable funding, access to medical evaluation and commercialisation of products that come out of research? Belgium, currently holding the Presidency of the EU, ambitions to strengthen Africa-EU cooperation in health. Before Belgium, the Spanish and the French presidencies also included cooperation with the Global South on their strategic agendas. To what extent can EU member states pull together their initiatives and ties with Latin America, Africa and Asia? And within EU institutions, what needs to happen to ensure synergies between the various DGs and international bodies at play? Finally, what should partners from policy, research and industry aim for: a global approach in health research or an agile mechanism focused on delivering solutions of local utility?

On 25 June 2024, Science|Business will bring together key representatives from the North and the South, international bodies, EU institutions, national governments, leading research organisations and companies to discuss the steps needed to crystallise a new era for health and life science cooperation with the Global South.