The World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2026 highlights recent advances in women’s health, showcasing innovations, addressing ongoing challenges, and exploring opportunities to enhance care and outcomes worldwide.
At Davos, leaders from government, finance, philanthropy, science, and industry argued that the biggest “breakthrough” in women’s health over the next decade is less a single discovery than the ability to scale what already works. Magdalena Skipper framed the stakes: women face delayed diagnoses and underinvestment, costing an estimated $1 trillion in lost economic potential. Panelists repeatedly returned to a systems view—innovation must be “accessible, affordable and used,” as Gargee Ghosh Chasin put it, citing one-dose HPV vaccination, AI-enabled ultrasound for high-risk pregnancy, and new contraceptive options. Sania Nishtar underscored delivery as the differentiator: Gavi’s platform helped vaccinate 86 million girls by 2025, narrowing equity gaps through pooled demand, price negotiation, and co-financing. Nadia Calviño emphasized partnerships that “transform pledges into money now,” including financing vaccine manufacturing in Africa and reinforcing primary care. Severin Schwan highlighted “frugal” diagnostics that overcome stigma and logistics, from cervical cancer self-collection to transportable HIV testing cards. Italy’s Health Minister Orazio Schillaci urged a shift “from reactive medicine to proactive medicine,” with sex-specific trials, gender-disaggregated data, and AI as “augmentation, not replacement.” The call to action: “Get smart on the issues and use our voices,” while treating women’s health as long-term economic infrastructure, not a cost.
To this session on breakthroughs in women's health. I am one of them. I am one of 3.9 billion women on this planet. And yet, women's health continues to be considered as a niche topic. This treatment, this approach, of course, has far reaching consequences. Consequences for the women themselves, for their families, for societies, for, the economies and of course, the health system, not to mention the future generations. Women continue to experience delayed diagnoses, limited access to appropriate care, and insufficient investment in sex specific research and innovation, resulting in preventable mortality, morbidity and loss of economic potential. And that loss of economic potential is estimated to be $1 trillion US dollars globally. But the news is not all bad. In recent years, women's health has reached an inflection point. Breakthroughs such as novel vaccines and medicines developed specifically with women's health in mind. Affordable, high impact maternal care. Maternal health interventions, next generation family planning technologies, and applications of AI to detect and track, for example, cervical cancer are proving that closing this gap that exists for women's health is possible. But more importantly, is really within reach. Just to give you an example, within the pages of nature, the scientific journal of which I am editor in chief, just last year we published a number of exciting discoveries, specifically in women's health. For example, explaining sex differences between skin cancer risk that can be linked to estrogen levels. Estrogen estrogen's, protective effects against kidney damage, as well as, for example, genetic basis for sex differences in depression. So my name is Magdalena Skipper. As I already said, I'm editor in chief of nature. And it's a great pleasure for me to lead this very distinguished panel with whom I'll be discussing, this important issue of women's healthcare and how to close that healthcare gap. Discovery and innovation are the necessary foundation, but they're not. That's not where the journey ends, of course. We have to translate scientific advances into meaningful population level interventions and impact. This has to be aligned with leadership. That's absolutely essential. And that alignment has to exist across science, finance, policy and delivery systems. And we'll be discussing all of this with this esteemed panel. So let me introduce them to you briefly. And then we'll launch into questions. We'll then have questions from you from the audience. So, from on my left we have, who is Minister of Health from Italy. Next to him is Severine Chauvin, chairman of Roche. Then, we have Nadia Calvino, president of European Investment Bank. Next to her, we have, Sania Nishtar, CEO of Gavi. And then at the very end. Definitely not least, we have Gargi Ghosh, president of global policy and advocacy at Gates Foundation. Welcome to all of you. So let me kick us off with a general question. Looking forward, what would you say, in your view, from your perspective, is the most promising scientific or technological breakthrough that has the greatest potential to close that women's health gap, in the next decade? So just ten years. And I'm going to start with you at that at that end.
Thank you. Thank you for the question and for assembling the panel. And look, to be honest, the greatest innovations from my perspective, are the ones that will end up being accessible, affordable and used by women around the world. And I get to work at the Gates Foundation with a range of scientists and technologists who fall in love with their individual, innovations and tools. And they are incredibly exciting. But I'm one of the people who arranges the finance, who manages the distribution channels, who thinks about how an individual woman decides to seek care and where she seeks care. And what we know is that, invention is critical and access and use is equally critical. And that's what makes the difference between product and impact. Now, there are incredible innovations. As I said, I think of the HPV vaccine for cervical cancer and the the new development of it being a one dose product. I think the AI ultrasound, that will bring early diagnosis of high risk pregnancy to women who have not been reached with that kind of care before. I think of the microarray patch for contraception that will give women options for how they want to choose to space their births. All of those are incredible. The technology is there, and we will have to make sure, particularly in the markets where we work in Africa and in Asia, that we are thinking equally about the financing and the distribution and ultimately the use and choices that women make to make sure those products have impact.
Great. You've touched on so many important points which will be developing, in the panel. And of course, it's not just the breakthroughs in and of themselves. It's that context, that accessibility, affordability and adoption, that willingness to adopt. Terrific. Sandhya, what would you say from your perspective?
Well, let me just pull two threads from what Gargi just said, and I completely agree with her that it's not just innovation. The challenges that you have to translate science and evidence into policy and then policy into pilots and then pilots, into scalable delivery. And I'll pull another thread from what she said, HPV. Now, you take the example of the human papilloma virus vaccine. Cervical cancer is the second most common cancer of women in most geographic populations. Every second minute, a woman dies because of cervical cancer, 90% of cervical cancers are preventable. And we have a very effective vaccine. For every 1000 adolescents vaccinated, you have 17.4 deaths averted. That's a very high impact. Now, Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, has been very effective in taking up that innovation, especially the single dose that Gavi very rightly referred to, and deploying it at scale. There are 86 million girls vaccinated by the end of 2025. In Africa alone, $1.8 billion worth of economic benefits have been accrued. And if you look at it from the equity standpoint, the Gavi supported countries Gavi, by the way, is the Vaccine Alliance. It provides access to vaccines. And in our 54 countries that are supported by us, we're just three percentage points behind the most developed countries of the world. Why has this happened? Because an institution exists, the delivery capability exists. We're able to crowdsource demand from from our countries. We're able to negotiate prices. We're able to, broker co-financing from countries, from donors, create a blended financing instruments and work with governments and deploy it through primary health care systems. So I completely agree with her that innovation has to be matched with delivery capability. And the challenges that if you do not have that delivery capability, if you do not have sustainable financing, you're unable to use innovations for the impact that they're intended to have.
Very interesting. And I love how you sort of subverting my question, because of course, my question was about the next ten years, but what I'm hearing from both of you already, and let's see how the rest of the panel does here. What I'm hearing from both of you already is actually, there's so many innovations already in place, which of course again surfaces the question, why is it that we continue to have this gap? But but that's a bigger question, Nadia, I'm going to continue with the same question. From your perspective, those breakthroughs in the next ten years.
Well, I'm not a scientist and I'm not in the vaccine or health sector as such. You know, president of the European Investment Bank. I'm in the money business. Right. But one of the areas that that inspires me the most, and that makes me most proud of, is precisely the area where we're partnering with the Gates Foundation, also with the Gavi alliance, with the World Health Organization. And that is trying to make sure that all these innovative medicines or vaccines or treatments can be extended to Africa, Asia and to women around the world. So our vaccination campaign against the popular papillovirus or the human papilloma virus, HPV, HPV. You can see I'm not a scientist. That that vaccination campaign that we just did in Uganda, you were referring to. And that's going to, you know, reach 2 million girls. That is one of the most impressive, most impactful use of our money and use of our technological capabilities. And I'm not going to be original. I think that in the next ten years, the most important thing is not so much the scientific development, but rather the ways to distribute these around the world, in particular by reinforcing primary health, because what comes keeps coming time and again, is that primary health is the starting point for a healthy society. Of course, women's health is the basis for a healthy society, a stable society. So I really think we have to put a lot of focus on that. The, the, family doctors, the way that we can get these medicines and these preventative treatments to every woman around the world. And also information, by the way.
Very good. Catherine, your perspective, any scientific or technological breakthroughs, are we going to continue along similar vein, which is very interesting and I think very important, by the way.
Right. And and I think, it also links to what you have already highlighted and that is, the need to actually make those innovations available, to, to people. And, one of the things we are working on, and I have to say, the industry has been working on that for quite some time, but I think there is a good chance to now, get to a point where this gets reality is what we refer to as decentralized testing or near-patient testing. Now, from a scientific point of view, there are certain tests which you can do at the point of care, right, which you can do in a decentralized way. But first of all, many of the tests, if you think of immunology tests, for example, this is technically very difficult. You typically rely on a more professional lab environment, for example. And secondly, up to today, Near-patient testing costs a fortune compared to the standardized testing in a in a big lab environment. Right. So along the lines of enabling access, I think the product itself can make a huge difference. And by the way, we are working together with the Gates Foundation, on that specific one as well, is to provide near-patient testing across technologies at very low prices. I think if we get that over the finish line, that would make a huge difference for patients around the world. And we are working on it, and we think there's a good chance to get there.
And our new technologies involved in this.
These are literally new technologies. Yeah. Yeah. These are new technologies. Yeah.
Great. Can you give us an example?
Yeah. The the problem is with, with, tests, typically, you have to, take the sample, a blood sample. Right. And then you send that blood sample to a lab, or if you can't even send it to a lab, then the patient has to go to a lab. And, you know, that's an enormous hurdle, right? To do that. And, and our idea is to bring those kind of tests on a platform where you can, take a drop of blood at the primary physician. Right. Have a small device, and get immediately the result at low cost. So it's not new in the sense of we can suddenly measure something which we can't measure today, but we can do it at a low cost at, the primary, healthcare point. And that would make a huge difference. Huge difference.
Well, that's a that's a very good example. Orazio, what's your perspective?
Yes. Thank you for inviting me. First of all, I think that is quite important to to change paradigm from reactive medicine to proactive medicine. Then from research, I think that we can increase the number of clinical trials tailored for women. Till now, several trials included more men than women. Third, treatment. Treatment should be personalized not only for the single patient, but also giving account the sex gender difference. This is quite important. Then when I I think to innovation in this moment, I cannot not mention, artificial intelligence. However, my position is clear. I think that artificial intelligence also in this field has potential very, very impacting, but only as augmentation, not as replacement. For an example, several cervical screening or breast cancer screening, AI can improve diagnosis, but is of the utmost importance that women access to screening. In Italy we have this year incremented the age for free breast cancer screening. But access is quite important. And then several other things. I, my opinion is, is that very important community workers, mobile clinics, cultural competence in this moment, Italy is piloting AI enhanced maternal risk prediction, for example, with high risk pregnancies month before symptoms. This work, however, let me say, is useful because we have a universal electronic records and primary care that acts on alerts. So in conclusion, technology amplifies systems, but it cannot replace them.
Very interesting. So what I find in many ways most interesting in your answer is that each one of you represents a different sector, more or less, comes to the problem from a different perspective. And yet what I heard in your answers pretty much universally, is that we have to focus on the human side of implementation of these science and technology innovation, but perhaps some of the most successful interventions do not require, breakthroughs in a true scientific meaning or technological meaning. Many of those tools exist already. It's about context, accessibility, affordability. That's that's a really, really interesting answer. However, Severin, I want to turn to you because you did talk about, I pushed you a little bit on the example of, of of new tools. So I want to stay with you. And really two parts to my question. So one is, can you tell us a little bit about how these new tools, whether the one that you alluded to earlier or for example, you know, the minister now mentioned AI very clearly. AI is touching all walks of life. How how can these tools be deployed respectfully in the context? So in some way, we're coming back to the first question and then the second. And respectfully, especially in the low resource setting. And the second part of my question, what is the role of large life science? Companies such as the one you represent, in embedding access and equity to these solutions.
Right. So let me give you a very specific example. You referred to cervical cancer, which is still a huge healthcare issue around the world. And of course, the vaccines should be, the first and most important, weapon to get this disease under control. But the reality is, not everybody will be vaccinated, in future. And also, there is a lot of women who are already affected by HPV. Right. So screening and treatment still remains very important to put this into context. Right. And actually for cervical cancer, the estimate is that still about 350,000 women die every year completely unnecessarily, because if you would screen them, you would find out early enough, you can treat them and you can cure the disease before it even, you know, develops. So one of the, of the things, we looked at, was what are the reasons why screening doesn't take place, right. And, in certain. And you would be surprised. I mean, this is less the case in, in developed countries, but also the case in developed countries, but certainly the case in many less developed countries. There's a stigma around cervical cancer. Right. So the women are not even if they would have the infrastructure, they would hesitate to go to the doctor, right, and be tested for it because there's a stigma in the village or in the community they are. When we realized that, then, we were saying, well, one way how we could resolve this is with a self-collection device. It's not rocket science to self-collect. The cells, the cells. Right. And and we developed this self-collection device. Right? I mean, it's very simple. I mean, from an innovation point of view, that's not really rocket science, but it still needs investment. You still need scientists. You still have to validate the method. You still have to make clinical trials to see whether it's equivalent, etc.. And, and we did that and I made a huge difference, you know, and I can give you another example. This is, related to HIV. Now, this is not only concerning women. This is this is, independent from sex, but, for HIV, we realized that the problem was, with the current technologies or with the with the technologies available, you literally, you know, you would have to take a blood and then you would have to make a PCR test to be really sure that that, or serological test, actually, now, the thing is, you up to that point, you couldn't transport the blood, right? Because you need a cooling chain, all kind of, of issues. Right. And you wouldn't even have the, the personnel to, to do that properly. So we developed and I'm very proud of that, actually, we developed a very simple it's actually not simple in this case. So here the science is actually quite complicated, but it looks very simple. And what you do is you, you you have a finger prick. You have a and and you take a little bit of blood and then we put this on a card. It's called plasma separation card. And then the blood dries on this card. Right. So this is actually high tech, but it literally looks like a credit card. Right. And you and has three spots on it and you put your blood there, it dries out. And you can send that card by normal mail at room temperature, even high temperatures and low temperatures to a lab. Right. Which can do that. Then the test, and report the cell. Now, what we also had to do is to develop a relatively simple IT solution around it, right, with a barcode telephone number, so that when the result, is, is, you know, obtained in a professional centralized lab that you find a way to bring back the result to the patient. Right? And, you know, mobile phones are pretty ubiquitous. So it's it's really kind of really thinking, what is you said the human side of it. Right? What is preventing, people, women in particular, to not go for cervical screening or to not test themselves for HIV. And often it has to do with logistics, and often it has to do with stigma.
Yeah. And so wonderful examples of innovation, almost frugal innovation, right, in this sort of low resource settings, but also the context. Then you talked about the, the, the IT infrastructure to be able to return the results. Really important examples. Right. So I want to move on to policy. You're the perfect person on the panel to talk about it. You know, we already established that, you know, perhaps we have many of the tools from the perspective of science and technology. How can we ensure that that policies can change and evolve appropriately? So some of these solutions that we already talked about can be implemented on a national scale. Perhaps there's an example from Italy.
Yes. This session asks what breakthroughs will close the women's health gap. The answer is not about choosing between low tech or high tech. I think that the most powerful drugs come from integrating both within universal health system and an example, the Italian longevity gender gap. I am some that Italy has about 24,000 centenarians. It is quite interesting that about 83% are women. So in Italy we have more than 19,000 women living behind the 100 years in relatively good health. And this is not a genetic luck. In fact, Italian women who immigrated in the US don't show the same advantage. The differential is a systemic universal health care in Italy. Mediterranean lifestyle, social cohesion, prevention, infrastructure and some other data. Italian women live over 86 years among the 80s globally. More important, they maintain independence for longer. When you build health system correctly, universally accessible, prevention focused, culturally embedded women don't just survive longer, they thrive longer. And another sample from Italy is maternal mortality in Italy is among Europe's lowest, not from new technology. Let me say from three elements. First of all, universal prenatal care. Every pregnant woman has access to regularity monitoring. Second, national surveillance. Since 2017, we track every maternal death and near-miss not to punish, but to learn. And, then we have also some concrete proposal fund system and not just intervention mandate, gender disaggregated data. And in my opinion, is of the utmost importance to treat women's health as longevity infrastructure, a not just new drugs but prevention systems. This is quite important for all health system, and this system will enable women to reach full biological potential.
Very, very important points indeed. Really embedded in the health systems, thinking about holistically, and of course, as a as an editor of a journal. I loved your comment about the importance of disaggregating data, which which is really crucial when it comes to analysis and drawing conclusions. Sonja, I'm going to come to you now. I realized that Gavi has just published, a sort of a new vision for global health. Reform. Can you tell us a little bit about this new vision and how can this be relevant in this context that we discussing here for closing this women's health gap?
Well, thank you for that question. Actually, I, I assume the role as a CEO two years ago, and at that time, it was quite apparent to me that we were at the cusp of a major transformation in the global health sector in the in fact, in the global development space, what we are seeing today is effectively the beginning of a very sharp decline in official development assistance. And I think international agencies have to position themselves for a for working in a very new environment, for existence in a very new context. So our reform, which is called the Gavi reform, was actually designed for that new context. And in fact, this morning a paper was published in The Lancet which, which you referred to, we had basically calling we're basically saying this is how we've transformed this Gavi. And in humility, we see there are lessons for the wider transformation of the global health architecture. And then the paper makes a call for clarity of objectives, the need for a process, the need for setting of principles, and the need for deciding on what's in scope. When we talk about transformation of the global health architecture, but relevant to this discussion that we're having, the very important discussion that we're having about women's health, one of the objectives, calls for merger at the last mile. What do I mean by that? Because as international agencies, we have a tendency to interact with countries on a standalone basis. And here I put my hat of a former cabinet minister responsible for a ministry back in my own country. And it was very difficult for me to deal with so many different bilaterals, private foundations, multilateral agencies, the world Bank, the UN system, each one of them wanted their money in a different bank account, their audit as a separate audit. Each one of them had a separate grant cycle, wanted reporting on a different indicator, mobilize different missions. Wanted a separate conversation, wanted a separate institutional arrangement. And that fragmentation really fragments the primary health care system even further. In fact, there is an appendix to the paper, and that appendix basically tells the story of a woman who goes to a primary health care setting and what she's dispensed with. Actually, we require holistic services at the point of care that a people centered, that that have nothing to do with the wish list of international agencies. And I think in this new future that we are stepping into, in which we have already stepped into, we really need a different, mode of engagement with countries. And we really need to put power, money, resources, in the hands of countries with, with, of course, the right accountability both ways. And we really have to mobilize and bolster national ownership, national resource mobilization, so that agencies such as us can play roles which are truly advantageous where economies of scale come into play.
This is a really powerful example. I think we know that across all walks of life, fragmentation is a key enemy of success and success at pace. But this is really, really powerful example when it comes to healthcare. And of course, women's healthcare is what we're discussing. Thank you. Thank you for sharing this. Nadia, I'm going to come to you now. Especially in the course of the, the the various answers to the first question, finance came up. And this is, of course, your focus. So let's talk about the, the financial approaches. What what financing approaches is it lending finance? Outcome based finance. What would you say? Or maybe public private partnerships? That would be, in your view, most effective when it comes to scaling of maybe some of the solutions we already discussed?
Thank you very much. I was going to I was going to ask for the floor to comment on what they had said, because they were bringing me three thoughts going beyond this panel, you know, talking about what we're living in Davos this week and what's going on in geopolitics. My first reflection when you asked do policies matter? How should policies? I was thinking, well obviously we are confronted with a jurisdiction that has decided that they don't support vaccines. That is a radical change of policy. So I would say any successful policy has to start by respecting science. As I said, I'm not a scientist, but I think that health policies need to be first and foremost based on empirical evidence, testing evidence of what works, what doesn't work. And there, you know, I that's also what I was saying that to me, the vaccination program in Uganda or like the vaccine production facilities in Africa in general, are one of the areas where I feel more proud of. And this brings me to the second comment, which has to do with, the how to how to make progress. And in this context, I think that partnerships become even more important because together we can go further. Our experience with the Gates Foundation and the Vaccine Alliance is excellent with W.H.O.. Also, I was discussing this morning with the head of the Novo Nordisk Foundation how we can work together, because what we see is that we are absolutely synergetic. For example, when we're talking about vaccine production facilities in Africa, and we're currently working on four different vaccine production facilities, I explained the role of the European Investment Bank as we transform pledges into money, because, okay, there may be wonderful pledges put by the members of Gavi or W.H.O., but they are pledges for the next ten years. But in order to start producing building a factory, you need the money now. So what the EIB can do is see how to provide these financing, how to do the financial management to get this going. And if we want to leverage the amounts that will be necessary. Public private partnerships are of the essence. We have here an example that works. I think that the role of Gavi federating different institutions is essential. And I also think the role of institutions like the European Investment Bank is, is also essential to federate, to bring all the donors, to bring all the partners around the table. So that's an area where I certainly can tell you we will continue, to, to work. And then thirdly, I couldn't avoid, you know, and Orazio was referring to, Italy. I am Spanish, so obviously one of the things I'm most proud of is also being, one of the most longevous countries in the world, in particular for women. I do think the way of life and the quality of the health system is absolutely determining these, these excellent results. But going beyond Italy or Spain, you know, in these discussions in Davos, there's a lot of discussion on, well, we heard today energy and there's a lot of discussion on power security and defence. There's a lot of discussion on finance. And every time I keep thinking of those areas where I am most proud to be European, and one of them is the health system. That's one of the reasons why Europe is the best place to live in the world, particularly if you're a woman, you know. And so I think we also have to emphasize these points every time we we come out, because sometimes we put the focus on some areas and we are missing the big point of what makes a difference for citizens, which is, at the end of the day, what policies are are for. Right, exactly.
I think there's a wonderful theme emerging, actually, of that sort of systems thinking if we're going to to move the needle, but I'm going to come to you Philanthropies. What what do you see as the most important function of philanthropies, especially in de-risking some of the novel approaches?
Sure. So we started out very strong and unified on the importance of access. But I want to be clear that I think we need just as much energy on new science. We we have many products that need to be delivered. We do not have all the products we need, science, policy, delivery. All three of those areas are critical. And I think philanthropy can be an actor, but really a catalyst or a nudge for the bigger players, to, to take action in each of those areas. So maybe I'll use maternal health as an example. I like maternal health for two reasons. As an economist, when I was studying, we used to talk about maternal health as an indicator that was too linked to income poverty to see much progress. Women were going to die in childbirth until the countries they lived in were rich. And it turns out that is not true. And we should not have been telling ourselves that because we ignored years of possible progress on maternal health, we now have the tools to make progress on women's health. Even in countries that have not moved up considerably on the income ladder. The other reason I like women's maternal health is because it is universal. The products we develop for maternal health are just as useful in Spain as they are in, in Africa, in, in Asia. And they may need to be tweaked. The product profile adjusted, and in critical ways, but that creates a commonality in a moment where we're seeing so much divide, so much retreat from generosity, to support the poorest. Actually, this is an area where we can all benefit. So just to give you an example of what gates has been doing, we made a commitment last year, $2.5 billion, to women's health innovation. And that is a commitment we made to signal the importance of scientific effort in the area. We hope our money makes a difference on product development. We don't know all the causes of high risk pregnancy. We have a lot of work to do in that area. But more importantly, we hope it signals to, R&D companies, to developers, to public funders that this is an area worth looking at. Now, we also can take a role in the manufacturing and development of products. We can come in as a first loss or a guarantee of some kind to help the big players invest in these products when there's doubt about uptake. And then finally, we can come in as a co-founder on delivery financing. So, I was very excited to be part of creating something called the Beginnings Fund, which is a combination of philanthropy and public money from UAE, actually, to support commodity procurement in maternal health. We have an incredible new product, a nutrition supplement that, that deals with maternal undernutrition, multi multi micronutrient supplement. These are very simple, hard science that become simple products that we just need to get out so we can we can catalyze the bigger givers, whether it's the world Bank or public government. Now the one thing we we can't do is any of it on our own. And so we think very hard about how our actions encourage others, how we use our voice to shine a light on the need for more. And so every time we come in to a scientific undertaking or a delivery, a co-funding effort, we really are looking to work with all of the people on this stage and others out there, because the scale of the problem is bigger than any, any one of us alone.
Great, great examples and really illustrating that philanthropies have a role right throughout the pipeline or the ecosystem or whatever term you want to use, we have time for one question from the audience is anyone? Does anyone have a burning question to ask the panel? Otherwise, I will keep torturing them with further questions. Okay. There are there are no questions from the audience. All right.
So I think.
There's one. Yes. Please go ahead.
So so.
There's a mic. Hang on. Microphone is coming.
Thank you. This was very complete because you're from different organizations I do have a question. My focus is on cardiovascular care for women. And we have evidence 30 years of evidence on sex differences. But we all know in maternal health there's many challenges. And we all know that AI could solve a lot of problems. So I'm just wondering, in the vast unmet needs in the cardiovascular space, where are the areas? Because we keep hearing that women's symptoms get ignored, they get dismissed and they don't fulfill. They can live a long, but that doesn't mean they live good quality of life. So in that space, is there anything that excites you or is there anything that you think we should solve?
Great question. I'm going to ask one of the panelists to to take it. Sonya, would you like to go ahead?
Yeah, I'd want to respond to this. As a former cardiologist.
Perfect.
Because, the fact of the matter is that after menopause, the risk of men and women becomes the same. And of course, women's health is cardiovascular health is a terribly ignored area. But I just wanted to refer to three statistics from the report, the World Economic Forum report on women's health. That was recently, I think, about published about two days ago. The first one was that private sector is investing 6% of resources into women's health. The second is that women live longer than men, but 25% of their life is spent in ill health. And the third statistic is relevant to what you said, because they said that whatever paltry resources that are allocated towards women's health, 80% of those go towards, reproductive health, maternal, neonatal and child health and a little bit on cancer. What about osteoporosis? What about cardiovascular disease? What about diabetes? What about autoimmune disease, which disproportionately affects women? What about fracture? Neck of femur that every fourth elderly woman, faces. And I have seen scenes of women, on, on beds taken away from hospitals, bedridden for life with bricks hanging from their legs, because this is just not a priority. So.
Yeah.
So so you have perfectly set me up for your final question, because we are unfortunately coming to the end of the session. It's just statistics you gave are really stark, and then you've just listed a whole litany, unfortunately, of conditions which continue to be ignored even though some of the gaps are being closed today. And we discussed some of these examples and how to accelerate this. So my question to each one of you, and I'm going to ask you for a very brief answer. If we are to see that gap, that health gap closed or really minimized, what is it that each one of you, each one of all of you in the audience, all of us, the society can do to accelerate the progress? I want to start with you.
Get smart on the issues and use our voices. Perfect. I'm gonna make that one. Okay, Sonya.
Very quickly and resonating. What you and, yourself and His Excellency. The minister said explicit articulation of policy data, disaggregation and accountability for results.
That's three, not one. But you allowed.
Yeah, I'm going to go for two also. One is to keep this issue on the agenda when we're talking about economic progress. Yes. Because women's health is the health of societies. And it's key for shared prosperity around the world. And the second one would be preserved, the role of Europe as a sanctuary for research.
Thank you Severin.
Related to that, I think it's absolutely important that we have a shift in societies of seeing health as an investment into, people and also into the economy rather than a pure cost item.
I agree. Well put.
Yes. Investment, not a cost for prevention for women, but I think absolutely systematic integration of community solutions, diagnostic tools, universal access as in Italy, cultural practices valuing women's health across the lifespan. I think that is a mixture. But we can reach these fundamental results together.
Amazing. We have a plan, we have a way forward. And there are so many points that were mentioned here that I think each one of us, in whatever we do, can actually engage with these different elements. You're a fantastic panel, very disobedient, but really incredible. Thank you so much. Please join me in thanking the panel. Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you.