WHO Director-General's keynote lecture at the Elisabeth B. Weintz Humanitarian Award – 8 October 2025

Dr Michael VanRooyen,

Dear colleagues and friends,

It is with deep gratitude, pride and humility that I accept the Elisabeth B. Weintz Humanitarian Award.

I would especially like to acknowledge the members of the Weintz family who are with us today, including her son Eric, who himself has served as a humanitarian in both Eritrea and my home country of Ethiopia.

Thank you for your generosity, and for this great honour.

I am especially proud and humbled to join the eminent list of previous recipients of this award: Nobel Prize winners, peacebuilders, activists and journalists, and especially receiving it during the 20^th anniversary of the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative. Happy birthday.

Each has shown moral courage in the face of injustice; each has demonstrated outstanding leadership; each has given voice to those who have none; and most importantly, each has made a difference.

They are not just experts and leaders, they are change-makers.

It's also a real pleasure for me to be back at the Harvard Chan School of Public Health, where I had the honour of delivering the commencement in 2021.

In fact, I have a longstanding link to Harvard that goes back more than 20 years, to 2004, when I was head of the health bureau in my home state of Tigray in Ethiopia.

That was the first time I came to Harvard, when I worked with Dr Mark Davis, who was then Chair of Emergency Medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital, to develop training packages for health extension workers, which were a major part of our health extension system reforms.

So in a way, today I've come full circle, being back at Harvard, receiving this award from the current Chair of Emergency Medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital, Dr Mike VanRooyen.

Standing here makes me reflect, frankly, with astonishment on how a kid born in Ethiopia in 1965 ended up here.

One of my earliest memories is walking with my mother through the streets of Asmara, where I was born, and seeing posters about a disease called smallpox and an organization that was eradicating it from our communities - the World Health Organization.

I had never heard of smallpox or WHO. But I knew that sometimes, diseases could sneak up on children and snatch them away, because that's what happened to my younger brother.

I don't know what disease took him. Maybe measles, according to my mother.

But most probably it was a disease that in another country would have been prevented with a vaccine.

The experience of losing my brother was one of the reasons I decided to pursue a career in public health - so that other people would not lose people they loved, like I did. We used to live in the same house, under the same roof, and the reason I survived was by mere chance. I survived, he died.

Inequity and insecurity were not things I read about in newspapers or history books that happened to other people in far-off lands.

They were things that I saw and experienced every day. They happened to me and my family.

And inequity and insecurity continue to be the driving force of my life and career.

Consider this: there is currently a 31-year discrepancy between the countries with the shortest and longest life expectancies.

A child in Ethiopia dies from a disease against which a child in Switzerland is vaccinated.

A young woman in Chad dies in childbirth because the services that save other women like her in the United States are not available where she lives.

A gay man in Peru is infected with HIV because he can't afford the preventive medicines that are covered by health insurance in the U.K.

A child in Gaza starves to death, while a child just a few miles away in Israel has plenty to eat.

These are the gaps and contradictions that stain our world.

Health inequities are not natural or accidental; they are the result of systemic differences in the opportunities people get, the resources they can access, and the power they hold.

Which leads me to my subject today: global health in a fractured world.

I would like to speak about three areas in which our world is fractured: systems, security and solidarity.

First, systems - specifically, health systems.

A staggering half of the world's population still lacks access to one or more essential health services - like vaccines, maternal care, or treatment for TB, HIV, malaria, hypertension and diabetes.

And even when those services are available, almost 1 billion people face financial hardship due to out-of-pocket health spending.

As a result, the progress we have made since the turn of the century against HIV, TB, malaria and maternal and child mortality has stalled or gone backwards.

At the same time, non-communicable diseases like heart disease, cancer, and diabetes now account for 18 million premature deaths each year.

And beneath it all, a silent crisis of mental health grows.

These challenges are difficult enough in the most secure countries, let alone in those beset by war.

Which leads me to the second fracture: a fracture in security.

We are all painfully aware of the extent to which our world is riven by conflict and displacement, in Gaza, Sudan, Ukraine and elsewhere.

And where war goes, disease follows.

It's no accident that polio resurged in Gaza last year, 25 years since the last reported case.

It's no accident that we are now battling outbreaks of cholera, measles, malaria, dengue, diphtheria and polio in Sudan.

Ending these conflicts, and the suffering they bring, requires the concerted effort of the international community.

Which leads me to the third fracture: a fracture in solidarity.

We're now seeing a dangerous retreat from both bilateral aid and multilateral cooperation.

Around the world, dramatic reductions in official development assistance are having severe impacts on health.

Millions of people are missing out on life-saving services; health facilities are being forced to close; and supply chains and information systems are disrupted.

And at the same time when many countries need us the most, WHO itself is under pressure from cuts to our funding by the United States and other countries.

Earlier this year, our Member States approved a significantly reduced budget for the next two years.

We have implemented a range of cost-saving measures, but even so, we have no choice but to reduce the size of our workforce.

Over the past few weeks and months, we have been through a very painful process of saying goodbye to many of our dedicated and talented colleagues.

These are people who have served the world in many ways, including under extreme pressure during the COVID-19 pandemic, and do not deserve to be treated this way.

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Dear colleagues and friends,

The diagnosis I have described is grave, but it is not terminal. The fractures of our world can be healed, not with simplistic solutions, but with courageous, collective and smart action.

First, we must heal our fractured health systems from the ground up, with primary health care as the cornerstone.

This is not glamorous work, but it is absolutely essential. Strong primary health care can meet up to 90% of a person's lifetime health needs.

The pandemic taught us that a resilient health system is not the same thing as an advanced medical care system.

Even some countries with the most sophisticated medical care were overwhelmed and surprised by COVID-19.

By contrast, some middle-income countries with fewer resources fared much better, thanks to investments in public health after outbreaks of SARS, MERS, H1N1 and others, especially the countries in the Mekong region because of the preparedness they had.

For instance, the simple art of contact tracing is one that many high-income countries struggled with, but that low- and middle-income countries did well, because of their muscle memory from previous outbreaks.

Strengthening primary health care means investing in the local health worker, the community clinic, and the supply chains that get quality medicines to those who need them.

It means addressing the projected global shortfall of 11 million health workers by 2030, a gap concentrated in the most vulnerable regions.

A system built on primary health care is the only way to ensure fair, affordable, and sustainable health for all-it is the ultimate tool for health justice.

Second, to heal the fracture in security, we need peace.

In Gaza, Sudan, Ukraine and elsewhere, WHO is working to alleviate suffering, support health workers and provide essential health services on which lives depend.

In Gaza, WHO is the main provider of medical supplies, and over the past two years, we have supported the evacuation of almost 8000 patients, including 5400 children, for treatment outside Gaza.

But the one thing we can't deliver in any of these places is the one that people need most, and that's peace. The best medicine is peace.

WHO's founders knew this when they crafted our constitution, which says that health is not only a human right, but the foundation of peace and security.

There can be no health without peace, and no peace without health.

Which means that third, to heal the fracture in solidarity, nations must work together to find shared solutions to shared problems.

That means more multilateral engagement, and less dependency on bilateral aid.

Many leaders have told me they are ready to use this moment to leave behind the era of aid dependency and transition towards sustainable self-reliance.

WHO is supporting countries to make that transition, by identifying tools to improve efficiency and generate new revenues for health from domestic sources.

This includes health taxes on tobacco, alcohol and sugary drinks, pooled procurement, especially public health insurance as a strategic solution, and more.

Likewise, although WHO is facing a very difficult situation, I also see it as an opportunity to make it stronger, sharper, more independent, more focused on our core mandate, and more empowered to serve the nations and people of the world.

And in response to the painful lessons that COVID-19 taught us, WHO, our Member States and partners have taken many measures to ensure a more coordinated, coherent and collective response to future pandemics.

For example, together with the World Bank, we established the Pandemic Fund, which has now disbursed US$ 885 million in grants to support lower-income countries to strengthen their capacities for pandemic prevention, preparedness and response. The focus is capacity building.

We also established the mRNA Technology Transfer Hub;

The WHO Biomanufacturing Workforce Training Initiative;

The Global Health Emergency Corps;

And at last year's World Health Assembly, WHO Member States adopted a set of amendments to strengthen the International Health Regulations.

Most significantly, in 2021 the nations of the world agreed to negotiate a new international accord on pandemic prevention, preparedness and response.

Just as the world has international treaties against shared threats such as nuclear weapons, climate change and tobacco, nations agreed they needed a similar instrument of international law to ensure a common response to the common threat of pandemics.

For three and a half years, our Member States engaged in difficult negotiations. There were those who said they could not succeed, and those who did not want them to succeed.

But in May this year, they reached consensus and at the World Health Assembly, they adopted the historic WHO Pandemic Agreement.

They are now negotiating an annex to that Agreement, the Pathogen Benefit and Access Sharing mechanism, which aims to ensure faster sharing of pathogens with pandemic potential, and equitable access to the medical products needed to respond to them.

We expect these negotiations to be concluded in time for next year's World Health Assembly in May.

After that, the Pandemic Agreement will be open for ratification by countries, and for its ultimate entry into force as international law.

The adoption of the Agreement was truly historic, not only because of what's in it, but also because of the context in which it was negotiated.

In a divided, divisive and fractured world, countries demonstrated they can still find common ground for a common purpose.

They showed that multilateralism is alive and well and that - to borrow an expression from Mark Twain - reports of its death are greatly exaggerated.

Multilateralism is alive.

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Dr Van Rooyen, dear colleagues and friends,

The responsibility to heal our fractured world lies not only with governments and international organizations. It lies with each of us.

We need leaders and policymakers who see health not as a cost to be contained, but an investment to be nurtured in security, stability and economic prosperity.

We need scientists, researchers and health professionals not only to do their vital work, but to communicate it with courage and clarity - to stand for what you believe.

And we need citizens to raise their voices for equity and justice. Demand that your leaders invest in health, not as a privilege, but as a fundamental human right for every human being, everywhere. Health is a fundamental human right in and of itself. Health also offers a path to prosperity.

In the end, the fractures in our world are fractures in our politics and in our collective will. But I believe it is within our power to mend them.

We have the tools. We have the knowledge. What we need now is the courage to make the right choices-to choose solidarity over nationalism, equity over greed, and evidence over ideology.

Let me leave you with two specific requests:

First, we seek your support in strengthening our scientific foundations.

Around the world, WHO works with a network of more than 800 collaborating centres, including two here at Harvard Medical School: the Center for Integration Science in Global Health Equity; and the Program in Global Surgery and Social Change.

With our reduced resources, we will rely even more on scientific partnership with our collaborating centres, so we seek your support in strengthening that partnership in the areas in which we already work together, and exploring new ones.

With the current crisis, we say we can do more with less, especially if we use WHO's convening power and work through networks and collaborating centres, as a multiplier. What it needs is a mindset change.

Second, we seek your support in strengthening our financial foundations.

For several years, we have been working on a range of measures to make our financing more sustainable and resilient. The idea is to reduce our heavy reliance on unpredictable, voluntary and earmarked funding from a handful of traditional donors.

If we had not taken those financing reform measures, we would be in a much worse situation than we are now.

But there is more we need to do to make WHO more independent, and to protect it from the impact of future shocks. The proposal we made a few years ago was to broaden the donor brace to protect against the shocks and ensure our independence.

In addition to these reforms, one of the ideas that has been proposed to me is to establish a WHO endowment, similar to the endowments that many U.S. universities use, including Harvard.

We would very much value Harvard's support and advice in helping us to build such an endowment to strengthen WHO and make its financing more sustainable and resilient to prevent future shocks and continue to be an independent voice.

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Dr VanRooyen, families of Mrs Elizabeth Weintz, dear colleagues and friends,

Once again, thank you for this great honour, which I receive with deep gratitude on my own behalf, but also on behalf of the incredible women and men I am proud to call my colleagues.

As we speak, they are in Gaza, providing lifesaving care;

They're in the DRC, responding to that country's latest outbreak of Ebola;

They're in Sudan, vaccinating against a cholera outbreak spurred by years of civil war;

They're in 150 different countries, supporting governments in the sometimes slow and unglamorous work of strengthening health systems.

It's sometimes easy to despair about the state of our world. But when I meet my colleagues, I take heart, and I take hope.

All wars and outbreaks end eventually. Once-deadly diseases become preventable or treatable. Science continues to pull back the curtain on the unknown and the inscrutable.

And if we look at improvements in global health since WHO was founded in 1948, there is every reason for hope.

Life expectancy globally, for both sexes, has increased from 46 to 73 years, with the biggest gains in the poorest countries.

Smallpox exists only in the history books, and polio will soon join it.

In the past 25 years alone, smoking has fallen by a third, maternal mortality has fallen by a third and child mortality has more than halved.

Cervical cancer, Ebola and malaria are now vaccine-preventable diseases.

Of course, we still face formidable challenges, but none that we cannot meet.

And you will be part of meeting those challenges. Your commitment to science, evidence and humanitarianism has saved lives and advanced peace around the world. I have every confidence that will continue.

As you know, the motto of this storied university is one simple but powerful Latin word: Veritas - truth.

In a world awash with mis- and disinformation, fake news and propaganda, the truth is sometimes harder to find and harder to hear.

But it remains essential to human flourishing.

The truth is not captive to the most powerful armies or economies;

It cannot be bought or sold;

It can only be sought, found and spoken.

The truth is not always comfortable or convenient - to others or ourselves.

But it is the only thing worth believing, the only thing worth seeking, and the only thing worth speaking: veritas.

Thank you very much.