Women’s health at the World Health Summit: towards much-needed global cooperation

We attended the World Health Summit (WHS) in Berlin last month and were pleased to see the attention given to women’s health in this year’s event. The summit was an opportunity to reflect on progress since the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development held in Cairo, which established sexual and reproductive rights as a cornerstone of sustainable development. According to Natalia Kanem, the Executive Director of the UNFPA, unintended pregnancies have fallen by one-fifth and the rate of modern contraceptive use has doubled in the three decades since. However, as she also highlighted in her keynote, one woman still dies from complications of pregnancy or childbirth every two minutes, and many deaths due to maternal health or cancer continue to be preventable.

Sessions at the WHS emphasised the importance of renewed investment in female-centric R&D to improve women’s health globally.

Currently, only 1% of global R&D funding targets female-specific conditions, excluding female-specific cancers.

The need for further investment to increase access to diagnostics and treatments, especially in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), was similarly emphasised. The session ‘Investing in Women’s Health; Driving Global Development’ highlighted the case of Female Genital Schistosomiasis, an easily treatable parasite infection which affects up to 56 million women globally, according to WHO’s Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. Female Genital Schistosomiasis continues to have a devastating impact on women’s reproductive health due to a lack of awareness, diagnostic capabilities and access to treatment, underscoring the need for greater investment in these areas.

Throughout several sessions on women’s health at the WHS, it was particularly encouraging to see that the definition of women’s health has expanded and deepened in the last few years: from a disproportionate focus on the reproductive years and issues (‘bikini medicine’), to a more holistic approach covering the entire lifespan. The Charité CEO, Heyo Kroemer, emphasised the importance of adopting this approach, particularly in an ageing population, where issues like menopause and cancers are going to affect a growing proportion of the population. There was also considerable focus around conditions that affect women disproportionately or differently, for which research and policies need to become more gender inclusive by considering sex specificities. A session hosted by Daiichi-Sankyo was dedicated to cardiovascular diseases (CVDs), highlighting the fact that their distinct manifestations in women lead to delayed or failed diagnosis and treatment, despite CVDs being the number one cause of death for women worldwide.

Another aspect of women’s health which was discussed throughout dedicated sessions was the question of female leadership in healthcare and health research, which is key to ensure that women’s health receives equitable attention and funding, and to foster trust through diverse representation.

One highlight of the WHS was the launch of the UNFPA’s WomenX Collective, which aims to introduce innovative, women-centric solutions through catalytic funding, collaboration and leveraging of technology. The projected return on investment for its US $100m investment is 1:7 in economic benefits, suggesting that investing in women’s health has the potential to yield significant returns. Indeed, the lack of innovation in this sector is not due to the limited potential for return, but reflects the pervasive gender bias and institutional barriers to the equal inclusion of women in medical and clinical research. We are still missing sex-disaggregated data on numerous global health conditions and lack basic medical knowledge on female-specific conditions like endometriosis because these questions have not been prioritised in research agendas. Women are still insufficiently included in the design of medical and clinical research, and funding decisions keep sidelining much-needed innovations for women’s health. Tackling this pervasive bias and institutional barriers requires global cooperation and policies, to transform R&D with more gender-inclusive indicators, clinical trial design and budgeting.

The UNFPA’s WomenX Collective is a step in the right direction when it comes to coordinating global efforts and accelerating impactful policies and innovations. We were thrilled to partner with the UNFPA, the Berlin Institute of Health and Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin for a round table dedicated to these issues, titled ‘Taking the Pulse of Women-Centric R&D Investment: Slow, Steady, or Accelerating?’. This side-event launched the WomenX Collective and brought together partners of the Equity 2030 Alliance, which was launched in 2023.  Combining innovative data with partnerships and renewed advocacy has the potential to truly advance women’s health R&D and health policies. Both the general program of the WHS and the launch of the WomenX Collective show promising advances in addressing inequities in women's access to diagnostics, treatments and healthcare, and closing the gaps in medical research.

These initiatives are encouraging and much needed. We must regularly track our collective progress and impact to ensure our efforts are delivering the desired outcomes without delay.

We’ll continue to share reflections and insights on our Women’s Health Hub and later this month, we’ll be publishing the latest G-FINDER data on investments in sexual and reproductive health issues. Our newly expanded scope will, for the first time, include fertility regulation and gynaecological and maternal health conditions. To know when the data is live, make sure you sign up to receive our updates.