 Good morning, everyone and welcome to this press conference from the 47th annual meeting of the World Economic Forum here in Davos Thank you for being here in the room. Thank you for watching on our live stream and on Facebook and a particular Hardly welcome to our fellow panelists here today. Good morning, everyone We gave this press conference quite a strong title as you've seen. Are we losing the fight for human health? It sounds a bit alarmistic, but you'll hear in a second from the panelists why it is something that we have to take very very seriously But without giving anything away, there is a silver lining. There are things being done and in particular We'll hear about one Initiative that is being launched here today at the press conference. Let me quickly introduce to you my fellow panelists Also for the sake of our online Audience here to my immediate left I'm joined by Kara Adams who is the chief executive officer of the Union for International Cancer Control UICC as most of you know it next to him We're joined by Ian C. Reed the chairman and CEO of Pfizer In the middle of the panel right there is Tim Evans who's the senior director of the global practice for health nutrition and population at the World Bank and Last but definitely not least. We're joined by Elizabeth Cousins. She's the deputy chief executive officer of the United Nations Foundation little bit of housekeeping Elizabeth has to leave us early, you know, everybody has a tight schedule here in Davos So apologies for that, but we'll definitely hear from her. Let's start though with you Ian The initiative we are launching today is a named axis accelerated. What is the initiative about? Let me talk a little bit about the initiative and the reason for the initiative It's an initiative spearheaded through IFPMA and has brought together 22 pharmaceutical companies Based on a shared vision of a future where no one dies prematurely from treatable preventable diseases Before going to more detail, I'd like to point out. This is an area of global health concern for society And our industry is the the fact that it's the large and growing burden of non-communical diseases We know that according to the wealth health organization NCD's cardiovascular disease cancer chronic respiratory diseases diabetes are Responsible for the largest percentage of global morbidity and mortality 38 million deaths a year. What is not so well known is that? 80% of NCD's rare deaths take place in low and middle income countries this is a tidal wave that is attacking the health of these countries and We're looking at this as an industry and with partners believe this is the time for a major initiative For it, you know access accelerated So our goal we've asked access accelerators to help achieve the UN sustainable development goals and in particular the target to reduce premature deaths from NCD's by 1 3rd by 2030 By working together with we will better understand the full range of access barriers That will help us enhance our support for current efforts and create new initiatives All the companies involved are committed to doing more individually on top of Roughly 100 programs we already do in in in the area of NCD's And we're putting a common framework in place to measure the impact of our work the Boston University School of Public Health is developing and managing the metrics and we're establishing pilot programs of partners are here today as We aim to overcome barriers to care So the World Bank group will identify solutions to financing regulatory and service delivery barriers And conduct pilots in primary care in several countries the first the first country will be in Africa and for our support of UICC you know City can see chat said a can see challenge cancer challenge We will support the work to improve cancer treatment and care in cities where more than 1 billion people live So while we're starting with cancer, we'll expand organizations that work across major NCD's We believe that through this partnership We can begin to build strong health care systems that will enable us to sustainably improve acts sustainably improve access to medicines and vaccines Advantage the use of innovative technologies and make better progress reduce NCDF's NCD with that I'll hand it back to you Thank you in thank you very much Elizabeth we have no time to lose so let's get right to it At the UN foundation you're obviously working with a lot of partners You've also been intricately involved in the negotiations of the SAG's hence my question to you this type of partnership What's what's different here and how will it help to achieve the SAG's? Well, thank you very much and good morning to everybody and the truest thing you just said is we have no time to lose Because 2030 is around the corner and there is a lot to do before we get there So I want to congratulate first of all all of the industry leaders who have been part of the access accelerated initiative This is really quite an extraordinary model of exactly how the sustainable development goals are supposed to work You know there are 17 goals and 169 targets and this initiative responds to the call of one of these Calling for a reduction in premature deaths from non-communicable diseases by one-third by 2030 as you've just said Partnerships like the access accelerated initiative that bring industry leaders together behind a common purpose Will be essential to achieving that objective You know the targets in the sustainable development goals are all what you could call stretch targets They're all achievable, but they all require us to stretch beyond business as usual to change how we think How we operate and how we collaborate and this initiative is not business as usual It's the kind of new partnership model that we need You know partnerships across sectors have recently gotten a fair amount of attention But partnerships within industries and within sectors are relatively newer They're much less common, but they have enormous potential to catalyze progress and Seeing what industry leaders are doing in this case working together to tackle the world's largest killer non-communicable diseases and especially to target those who have the least access to life-saving medicines and treatments Is not just the right thing to do. It's actually also smart economics I just want to mention something that many of you will be hearing about this week in Davos new research from a different set of industry Leaders who are part of the business and sustainable development commission who show that pursuing sustainable market hot spots As they call it in just four areas energy cities food and agriculture and health Can generate at least 12 trillion dollars in new business value by 2030 and create up to 400 million new jobs That's an extraordinary prize and it's also doing good while doing well So just the last point I would make in this in this context is to say that tackling the toll of NCDs One target among 169, but such a fundamentally important target goes way beyond health Because it really goes to the underpinning of the healthy societies and economies that we're all striving for so again I want to congratulate everybody on the importance of this initiative and look forward to seeing it move forward. Thank you Thank you, Elizabeth Kerry over to you. We launched yesterday here the Kansas City and Kansas City Challenge And I understand you're one of the first partners Partnering with access accelerated partnering with Pfizer here Why is that why have you taken the step what convinced you to be a partner? Oh, well, let me just echo what Elizabeth just said Which is that the SDGs actually yes There's the health goal under goal number three and which lists a number of challenges Which society has including the addressing of of cancer and the non-communal diseases it also talks about cities under SDG number 11 and it talks about partnership under SDG 17 and UICC when it was formulating its city cancer challenge 2025 which we launched yesterday Understood that in order to address cancer in low middle-income countries We need to bring together a collaboration a partnership and focus our attention in the areas or the regions where we can have most impact And it's pleasing to hear Elizabeth report that others consider that working at city level is a great way to start to improve the Health of a country, but we can start at the city level What's so exciting about access accelerated as Ian quite rightly said is it's bringing together 22 companies in a sector who are sharing an ambition to make a difference in those target regions around the world Where access to medicines access to technology access to human resources is so weak and poor But in truth unless we dress the underpinning Framework the health systems themselves to put in place pathology Imaging diagnostics palliative care, etc We really are not going to be able to give them the value and the benefit of the immense innovation Which has taken place across many industry sectors in the last 10 20 years so our ambition is to work with access accelerated and other partners in other sectors including the radiotherapy industry the Imaging a diagnostics industry and all the cancer organizations Committed to help those countries to improve the the way in which we treat cancer in future Report back the stgs that we as a collaborative Partnership have made a difference in those part of the world that really do need international support Thank You Kerry and Tim the World Bank Group is working with a lot of governments around the world is on the local work on what happens on the ground Can you share with us? In your experience when is it was when is the government ready to take action on the question of NCDs right well Generalizing there are really sort of four key areas that we find are absolutely fundamental to increasing access for treatment to NCDs And I call them forems. The first is money and as a banker you wouldn't be surprised. We talked about money But first is to make clear that this is An investment that has a very positive return not only in health But to the economy overall so we have to continue to make that case But the second is that we need to change the way we're financing systems so that we're not taxing poor patients When they're ill by making them pay out of pocket But moving to prepayment systems which give them access to care and allow us to organize Rational approaches to service Which is fundamental so that's money second is management and I'm picking up on Kerry's points here If you don't have good systems intelligent systems that can figure out not only access But equitable access to vulnerable populations disadvantaged populations with quality Then we're not going to achieve what we need to but the third M is measurement and If you don't measure what you're doing then you can't manage it and we really need to have very clear time bound targets We need to have those real-time information systems that are allowing us to know whether in fact We're making the progress that we do that we need to and finally the last M is mobilization And that's the recognition that this is not any single Institutions agenda. This is something that all partners have a role in this is multi-sectoral. This is public private This is local global and so that mobilization is absolutely fundamental because 14 years or 13 years now is a very short time relative to the ambition of this initiative So we really have to start moving right now and Tim if you're going through the Congress Center here We have about between 40 and 50 heads of states and government here. Are you in your mind get going and saying, okay? He's taking three amps. She's taking two amps or would you would you say the awareness is there? I think it is and I'm a big promoter of M&Ms. So So we really need to make this viral and have this go viral But I think that that leadership have had a status fundamental But it's leadership 21st leadership which says it's not government alone It's government with civil society private sector that can actually make this change Achieve scale with quality. Thank you. Ian. Let me come back to you That was 2017. Let's say we meet next year Again here at this place and I'll ask you how many organizations you I think you mentioned 22 have joined already How many are we talking about next year? Well, we expect to get more than 22, but I think initially what we're focused on is Ensuring that individual companies in that coalition have more programs focused on the NCDs both treatment and care Today we have about a hundred programs, but we expect that to expand That the UICC and the World Bank group partnerships will be underway with selected city and country works And we'll have defined a set of metrics to measure our progress and we'll begin to report out what we're learning We are using Boston University to do that and this is going to be a rigorous and and so I'm looking forward to coming back in a year and saying This is let's look at the data. Yes. Look at the data. I think that's a that's a great idea This please I think it's worth emphasizing we are moving into a new paradigm We've had a lot of your UN resolutions over the last six seven years since 2011 Calling on a multi-sector approach the issue of NCDs Recognizing that most NCDs require a range of medical interventions. There's the issue of risk factors addressing tobacco control obesity physical activity you have Viruses that cause NCDs that does that it's a very complicated beast and the UN system through member states have called on a multi-sector approach And I think to be fair. We've struggled to respond to that We've to find a way of bringing cohesion between private public and civil society has been difficult But I think what you've seen in the last 24 hours is certainly on the NCD side a number of organizations like my own The access accelerated and others hopefully Recognizing that we can work in common on an ambition to make things better around the world And we can manage the conflict of interest inherent in that ambition and that's a grown-up path to achieving those SDGs So I think we are going to be learning in use the word learning We call our learning cities learning cities reason being that we as a as an organization and with our partners are doing things We have never done before working with governments and city leaders So there will be a period of time over the next two years where we'll work with likes of Cali Yangon and our son soon and other cities to learn with them The best way to help them address the challenge that they are facing and you know as we learn as we expand as the pilots Go forward we'll be looking for other parts of society to join in you know We realize this isn't a huge task and the 22 pharmaceutical companies and and UACC and the World Bank are important But eventually we need to get in Major corporations that work in these countries have a vested interest in the in the health in those countries to participate in this Activity and that's that's that's how we'll make it powerful Just add to that I think on the learning front You know, we're we're interested in learning at scale We want to see system-wide benefits and so these pilots are not really startups. They're scale ups That's that's an important one. Let's see if you have any questions from the room. We have a microphone here So can I see a show of hands if you have any questions? I know the first question always is it takes it takes a moment to show up It's like the teacher asking for the homework No, well, it seems like you you've answered everything to to everybody's happiness Then it's my task to conclude this press conference. Thank you very much for being here Thank you for joining us in the room and thank you for watching. Thank you very much. Thank you very much