Bill Gates

Development is adaptation: Bill Gates’s shift is actually about linking climate change and health

Reda SadkiGlobal health

Bill Gates’ latest public memo marks a significant shift in how the world’s most influential philanthropist frames the challenge of climate change. He sees a future in which responding to climate threats and promoting well-being become two sides of the same mission, declaring, “development is adaptation.” Gates argues that the principal metric for climate action should not be global temperature or near-term emission reductions alone, but measured improvement in the lives of the world’s most vulnerable populations. He argues that the focus of climate action should be on the “greatest possible impact for the most vulnerable people.” The suffering of poor communities must take priority, since, in his view, “climate change, disease, and poverty are all major problems. We should deal with them in proportion to the suffering they cause.” Climate change is about the health of the most vulnerable This position resonates with a core message that has emerged …

Gender in emergencies

Gender in emergencies: a new peer learning programme from The Geneva Learning Foundation

Reda SadkiGlobal health, Leadership

This is a critical moment for work on gender in emergencies. Across the humanitarian sector, we are witnessing a coordinated backlash. Decades of progress are threatened by targeted funding cuts, the erasure of essential research and tools, and a political climate that seeks to silence our work. Many dedicated practitioners feel isolated and that their work is being devalued. This is not a time for silence. It is a time for solidarity and for finding resilient ways to sustain our practice. In this spirit, The Geneva Learning Foundation is pleased to announce the new Certificate peer learning programme for gender in emergencies. We offer this programme to build upon the decades of vital work by countless practitioners and activists, seeing our role as one of contribution to the collective effort of all who continue to champion gender equality in emergencies. Learn more and request your invitation to the programme and its first …

Certificate peer learning programme for equity in research and practice

From diagnosis to duty: health workers confront their own role in inequity

Reda SadkiGlobal health

A thirteen-year-old girl in Nigeria, bitten by a snake, arrived at a hospital with her frantic family. The hospital demanded payment before administering the antivenom. The family could not afford it. The girl died. This was one of the stark stories shared by health professionals on September 10, 2025, during “Exploration Day,” the third day of The Geneva Learning Foundation’s inaugural peer learning exercise on health equity. The previous day had been about diagnosing the external systems that create such tragedies. But today, the focus shifted. “Yesterday, we looked at the problem,” said TGLF facilitator Dr María Fernanda Monzón. “Today, we look in the mirror. We move from analyzing the situation to analyzing ourselves, our own role, our own power, and our own assumptions”. The practitioner’s role The day’s intensive, small-group workshops challenged participants to move beyond naming a problem to questioning their own connection to it. Groups brought their …

Remembering Joseph Ngugi

From Murang’a to the world: remembering Joseph Ngugi, champion of peer learning for community health

Reda SadkiGlobal health, Leadership

“What keeps me going now is the excitement of the clients who receive the service and the sad faces of those clients who need the services and cannot get them.” Joseph Mbari Ngugi shared these words on May 30, 2023, capturing the profound empathy and dedication that defined his life’s work. This commitment to serving those most in need—and his deep awareness of those still unreached—characterized not only his career as a senior community health officer and public health specialist in Kenya’s Murang’a County, but also his extraordinary five-year journey through the Geneva Learning Foundation’s most rigorous learning programmes. It was the morning of the first day of August, 2025. The message from his daughter was simple and devastating: “Hello this is Wanjiru Mbari Ngugi’s Daughter. I am the one currently with his phone. This is to inform you that Dad passed away this morning.” Joseph’s passing represents more than …

Climate change and health: a new peer learning programme by and for health workers from the most climate-vulnerable countries

Reda SadkiGlobal health

GENEVA, Switzerland, 23 July 2025 (The Geneva Learning Foundation) –Today, The Geneva Learning Foundation (TGLF) announces the launch of “Learning to lead change on the frontline of climate change and health,” the inaugural course in a new certificate programme designed by and for professionals facing climate change impacts on health. Enrollment is now open. The course will launch on 11 August 2025. Two years ago today, nearly 5,000 health professionals from across the developing world gathered online for an unprecedented conversation. They shared something most climate scientists had never heard: detailed, firsthand accounts of how rising temperatures, extreme weather, and environmental changes were already devastating the health of their communities. The stories were urgent and specific. A nurse in Ghana described managing surges of malaria after unprecedented flooding. A community health worker in Bangladesh explained how cholera outbreaks followed every major storm. A pharmacist in Nigeria watched children suffer malnutrition …

WHO Global Conference on Climate and Health: New pathways to overcome structural barriers blocking effective climate and health action

Reda SadkiGlobal health

After the World Health Assembly’s adoption of ambitious global plan of action for climate and health, global and country stakeholders are meeting in Brasilia for the Global Conference on Climate and Health, ahead of COP30. Three critical observations emerged that illuminate why conventional global health approaches may be structurally inadequate for the challenges resulting from climate change impacts on health. These observations carry particular significance for global health leaders who now possess a WHA-approved strategy and action plan, but lack proven mechanisms for rapid, community-led implementation in the face of an unprecedented set of challenges. They also matter for major funders whose substantial investments in policy and research have yet to be matched by commensurate support for the communities and health workers who will be the ones to translate better science and policy into action. Signal 1: When funding disappears and demand explodes Seventy percent of global health funding vanished, …

NIGERIA insights report cover

Nigeria Immunization Agenda 2030 Collaborative: Piloting a national peer learning programme

Reda SadkiGlobal health

Insights report about Nigeria’s Immunization Agenda 2030 Collaborative surfaces surprising solutions for both demand- and supply-side immunization challenges When 4,434 practitioners from all 36 states asked why children in their communities remained unvaccinated, the problems they thought they understood often had entirely different root causes. “I ended up being surprised at the answer I got,” said one health worker. Half of the health workers who participated in Nigeria’s largest-ever peer learning exercise in July 2024 discovered that their initial assumptions about local immunization challenges were wrong. The six-week programme generated 409 detailed analyses of local immunization challenges, with each reviewed by peers across the country. One year after The Geneva Learning Foundation launched the first Immunization Agenda 2030 Collaborative, in partnership with UNICEF and Gavi, under the auspices of the Nigeria Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA), a comprehensive insights report documents findings that illuminate persistent gaps between health system …

The funding crisis solution hiding in plain sight

The funding crisis solution hiding in plain sight

Reda SadkiGlobal health

“I did not realize how much I could do with what we already have.” A Nigerian health worker’s revelation captures what may be the most significant breakthrough in global health implementation during the current funding crisis. While organizations worldwide slash programs and lay off staff, a small Swiss non-profit, The Geneva Learning Foundation (TGLF), is demonstrating how to achieve seven times greater likelihood of improved health outcomes while cutting costs by 90 percent. The secret lies not in new technology or additional resources, but in something deceptively simple: health workers learning from and supporting each other. Nigeria: Two weeks to connect thousands, four weeks to change, and six weeks to outcomes On June 26, 2025, representatives from 153 global health and humanitarian organizations gathered for a closed-door briefing seeking proven solutions to implementation challenges they knew all too well. TGLF presented evidence from the Nigeria Immunization Agenda 2030 Collaborative that sounds almost …

When funding shrinks, impact must grow the economic case for peer learning networks-small

When funding shrinks, impact must grow: the economic case for peer learning networks

Reda SadkiGlobal health, The Geneva Learning Foundation

Humanitarian, global health, and development organizations confront an unprecedented crisis. Donor funding is in a downward spiral, while needs intensify across every sector. Organizations face stark choices: reduce programs, cut staff, or fundamentally transform how they deliver results. Traditional capacity building models have become economically unsustainable. Technical assistance, expert-led workshops, international travel, and venue-based training are examples of high-cost, low-volume activities that organizations may no longer be able to afford. Yet the need for learning, coordination, and adaptive capacity has never been greater. The opportunity cost of inaction Organizations that fail to adapt face systematic disadvantage. Traditional approaches cannot survive current funding constraints while maintaining effectiveness. Meanwhile, global challenges intensify: climate change drives new disease patterns; conflict disrupts health systems; demographic transitions strain capacity. These complex, interconnected challenges require adaptive systems that respond at the speed and scale of emerging threats. Organizations continuing expensive, ineffective approaches will face programmatic obsolescence. …

PanoramAI Reda Sadki artificial intelligence

The business of artificial intelligence and the equity challenge

Reda SadkiArtificial intelligence, The Geneva Learning Foundation

Since 2019, when The Geneva Learning Foundation (TGLF) launched its first AI pilot project, we have been exploring how the Second Machine Age is reshaping learning. Ahead of the release of the first framework for AI in global health, I had a chance to sit down with a group of Swiss business leaders at the PanoramAI conference in Lausanne on 5 June 2025 to share TGLF’s insights about the significance and potential of artificial intelligence for global health and humanitarian response. Here is the article posted by the conference to recap a few of the take-aways. The Global Equity Challenger At the Panoramai AI Summit, Reda Sadki, leader of The Geneva Learning Foundation, delivered provocative insights about AI’s impact on global equity and the future of human work. Drawing from humanitarian emergency response and global health networks, he challenged comfortable assumptions about AI’s societal implications. The job displacement reality Reda …