Le Lac Tchad

Why an open-source manifesto for global health?

Reda SadkiGlobal health, Global health, The Geneva Learning Foundation

Lire la version française: Pourquoi un manifeste open-source pour la santé globale?

The global immunization community is now focused on “the big catch-up”, dealing with recovery of immunization services from the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic, as countries – and immunization staff on the frontlines – work toward the goals of Immunization Agenda 2030 (IA2030).

At the Seventy-Fourth World Health Assembly, the Director General of the World Health Organization had called for “a broad social movement for immunization that will ensure that immunization remains high on global and regional health agendas and help to generate a groundswell of support or social movement for immunization”.

A Movement is larger than any one individual or organization. The Geneva Learning Foundation is one of many working to support this Movement. In March 2022, we launched a call for immunization staff at all levels of the health system to connect across boundaries of geography and hierarchy – to commit to working together to achieve the goals of Immunization Agenda 2030 (IA2030).

In 2022, over 10,000 health professionals, primarily government workers from districts and facilities, joined this movement and shared ideas and practices, analyzed root causes of their local immunization challenges, and developed and implemented corrective actions to tackle them, together. Learn more

Today, we share an open-source Manifesto for how health services could develop in ways that we think would make them more effective, recognizing health workers and communities – and the expertise and experience they hold because they are “there every day” – at the centre of public health systems.

No vision or strategy can or should be developed as a pronouncement by a single organization of how things should be.

  • This Manifesto is an open-source draft because, in today’s complex world, we tackle challenges that no one country or organization can possibly overcome alone.
  • For such a manifesto to be meaningful requires the participation, and contribution of those on the frontlines of global health, in dialogue with global, regional, and country leaders.

This is why we are inviting you – along with more than 10,000 members of the Movement for Immunization Agenda 2030 (IA2030 – to bring to life and shape this Manifesto.

Version 1.0 of the manifesto was first shared in a special issue of The Double Loop, the Geneva Learning Foundation’s insights newsletter. Learn more