WFPHA Awards 2023

The World Federation of Public Health Associations (WFPHA) recognizes outstanding contributions to public health through its annual awards program. The program aims to acknowledge and honor individuals and organizations that have made significant achievements in promoting health, preventing diseases and injuries, and ensuring safe and healthy conditions for people around the world.

This year, the WFPHA presents a series of awards during the 17th World Congress on Public Health (WCPH), held in Rome, Italy, on May 02 to 06, 2023.

The Lifetime Achievement Award for Excellence in Global Health is presented to Prof. Ulrich Laaser. He is a renowned public health professional who has made extraordinary contributions to the WFPHA in improving global health, including its member organizations. Prof. Laaser has spent his career advocating for health equity, social justice, and the rights of marginalized communities worldwide. His pioneering work has left a significant impact on the public health community, and his legacy continues to inspire future generations of public health professionals.

The Organizational Excellence Award is presented to Doctors Without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières) for their remarkable work in delivering healthcare services in crisis-stricken regions. This non-governmental organization has provided medical assistance to millions of people in more than 70 countries around the world. Their unwavering commitment to promoting health and preventing diseases has helped save countless lives. The award is presented to Dr Monica Minardi, President of Doctors Without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières) Italy.

The Organizational Excellence Award recognizes outstanding contributions to public health by a not-for-profit, non-governmental organization (NGO) or institution/entity working to promote health, to prevent disease and injury, and to ensure conditions in which people can be safe and healthy.

The Center of Data and Knowledge Integration for Health (Cidacs) is the recipient of the Information and Data Distribution Award. This organization has done extensive work in collecting, organizing, and distributing data and information about pandemics, national disasters, and health emergencies on a large scale. Their efforts have significantly contributed to the understanding of public health crises and provided critical information for effective public health interventions. The award is presented to Prof. Mauricio Barreto, Founder and Director of the Center of Data and Knowledge Integration for Health.

The Refugee and Immigrant Global Health Equity Award is presented to the population of Lampedusa. This island in the Mediterranean has prioritized and developed a plan for refugees and immigrants from major world crises. The population of Lampedusa has shown exceptional commitment to ensuring that refugees and immigrants receive the necessary health services and support. Lampedusa Mayor Filippo Mannino receives the award. 

One Health Commission is the recipient of the Climate and Health Action Award. This organization has done remarkable work in addressing the presence of climate change as an imminent public health threat. Dr Annapaola Rizzoli from the Research and Innovation Center of the Edmund Mach Foundation, the first One Health center in Italy, gets the award.

The recipients of this year’s awards have made significant contributions to promoting health, preventing diseases and injuries, and ensuring safe and healthy conditions for people worldwide. Their work is a testament to the power of public health and serves as an inspiration to all of us to continue working towards a healthier world.

WFPHA Launches Global Maternal and Child Oral Health Initiative to Achieve Oral Health Equity

The World Federation of Public Health Associations (WFPHA) has launched a new global oral health initiative aimed at improving oral health equity among maternal and child population. The initiative, announced on May 4, 2023, during the 17th World Congress on Public Health, calls for action by health professionals and policymakers to improve maternal and child oral health by integrating oral health care into the existing and future antenatal health system for women in pre-pregnancy (preconception), pregnancy, and post-pregnancy stage of life.

“Oral health is essential to overall health for all, and women are the key change agents in achieving oral health for children, families, and communities. Therefore, oral health must be positioned as an integral part of primary and antenatal health, focused on prevention. The new norm needs to be a caries-free mouth”, says Dr Hyewon Lee, the Chair of the WFPHA Oral Health Working Group and promotor of this initiative.

The initiative comes at a time when oral health care for women and children is increasingly challenging, especially in communities with limited resources and a lack of health care systems. The cost of care, lack of oral health literacy, and limited access to dental facilities and dental workforce availability are some of the main barriers. In addition to those biological links between a mother’s oral health and the oral health of her child, what matters the most is to create a system of health care and health promotion for mothers and children to achieve oral health and oral health equity. When children grow in an environment with adequate family and community support that promote a proactive attitude towards oral health, their overall health, wellbeing, and development thrives.

“Women, as the primary caregivers to children, have a great influence on their development. With the right empowerment tools, women have the potential to play a positive role in yielding desirable oral health outcomes” adds Dr Khabiso Ramphona, a specialist in community dentistry at the University of the Western Cape and the Chair of the Public Health Association of South Africa, Dental Public Health Special Interest Group.

The WFPHA supports the World Health Organization’s universal health coverage that includes oral health care and calls on all member associations to advocate for timely, affordable, and adequate access to essential oral health care services for women of childbearing age and children. This initiative, recently endorsed by about 30 international and national health organizations, will enhance the global oral health momentum by creating collaborative efforts in integrating oral health into maternal and child health agendas from policy to practice levels. Our message is clear: We believe women are the key change agents to secure and improve the oral health of children, families, and communities.

COVID-19: Any Lessons Learned?

“We are not ready to face a new pandemic.” – Ricciardi (UNICATT)

“No country is safe until all countries are safe.” – Krech (WHO)

The 17th World Congress on Public Health, taking place in Rome from May 2nd to May 6th, coincides with a critical juncture for our world as we continue to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic, which has caused significant changes and exacerbated existing inequalities.

It is no coincidence that one of the key Plenary Sessions of the event is dedicated to a very pressing and painful subject: COVID-19: The Ongoing Challenge, Lessons Learnt, and How to Prevent the Next Pandemic.

The COVID-19 outbreak resulted in the loss of almost 7 million lives worldwide. This recent pandemic has also been a formidable stress test, examining the resilience of global health systems and exposing weaknesses in public procurement processes. However, managing COVID-19 has brought the healthcare sector, which is usually on the fringes of political debate and largely overlooked by the media, to center stage.

Why the situation went out of control?

“It’s beyond argument that not a single state in the world had adopted a perfect strategy during the pandemic. However, some of the states, like, for example, the UK, the USA, and Brazil have paid a very huge price in terms of losses and deaths because their governments, being directly dependent on public opinion, didn’t listen to the scientists, they didn’t lockdown immediately and they didn’t enforce vital public health measures”, – underlines Walter Ricciardi, Professor of Hygiene and Preventive Medicine at the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart and Scientific advisor to the Minister of Health for COVID-19 emergency from 2020 to September 2022. “It’s necessary to underline”- suggests Professor “that the responsibility still lies in the hands of the national governments. In some cases, the difference between the global response and the national was very divergent”. Ricciardi also emphasized that the so-called “infodemic (* false and misleading information about a disease outbreak) has led to mistrust in health authorities and has undermined the public health response”.

“The COVID-19 pandemic didn’t fall from heaven, it wasn’t the first wake-up call in this young century – we had the bird flu (H5N1), the swine flu (H1N1), Ebola, and in some regions, we had also Zika and then eventually we faced COVID. After each of these crises, external experts around the world looked at what the governments did right and what they did wrong, what the WHO did right or wrong and what is need to be done in the future. There were a series of recommendations already in 2015. However, countries didn’t address the root causes before in order to be better prepared for the epidemical pandemic. We needed a comprehensive understanding of the weaknesses in countries and resolute action to mitigate those weaknesses. Unfortunately, that has not happened”, stresses Dr Rüdiger Krech, a senior official at the World Health Organization (WHO).

What does COVID-19 teach us or should teach?

Now that the COVID-19 pandemic is in a state of transition, it is an ideal time to reflect on the valuable lessons we have learned.

“I’m not sure that the lessons were learned. I would say that certainly the lessons were taught”, Ricciardi says by highlighting two main lessons to focus on:

• Targeted healthcare investments are essential to strengthen public health systems and prevent pandemics in the future;
• A more determined and less selfish attitude toward investments in global collaboration and in human capital is needed.

What if the next pandemic happens tomorrow?

It is impossible to predict when the next pandemic will occur, but as experts suggest it is inevitable. Thus, it is extremely important to understand whether current national public health systems are ready to face another significant challenge.

“It’s not a question of whether or not we are going to see the epidemics or the pandemic but only when we are going to face it. The biggest mistake would be to ignore the weaknesses that we see in our own countries and that we monitor globally. As the pandemic went on, we learned a lot about how it evolves and every pandemic will evolve differently. Therefore, we will always learn with the development of the pandemic but the key benchmarks (for instance, the social distance) needs to be kept and the main 30 risks that can potentially lead to the next pandemic should be addressed“, underlines Dr Krech.

“It depends on the country but the majority of them unfortunately are not ready. Some of them are too relaxed now and it seems like they haven’t made any conclusions from the previous pandemic experience. As we see, less money is invested in public health and in particular in public care”, – says Walter Ricciardi who, nevertheless, hopes that the next time the reaction would faster because “now we are certainly more experienced”.

Solutions on the table:

In March 2023, the World Health Organization began negotiations on a global accord for pandemic prevention, preparedness, and response. The “zero draft” serves as a basis for the negotiations in order to create an accord that will protect nations and communities against future pandemic emergencies.

“The global pandemic treaty should be the first step towards the global management of the future pandemic. We have been discussing this document for the last two years and I have to admit that we are still very slow because major countries are not in favor of this initiative. And the second and the third steps should certainly be the major investment in the public care system and the better coordination“, – Prof. Ricciardi concludes.

In Dr Krech’s opinion, in health promotion it is very important “to codesign, to empower and include in the policies and recommendations the people we want to reach” and to understand “how people behave and what they accept and do not accept”.

At the international level, collaboration should be considered an essential element.

“Virus do not know borders and we shall remember for the future: no country is safe until all countries are safe”, – concludes Dr Rüdiger Krech.

No Public Health Without Planetary Health

“Fighting climate change today is the best public health opportunity.” – Maria Neira (WHO)

“We are all responsible for the health of the planet.” – Emma Te Patu (WFPHA)

Since the outbreak of COVID-19, the concept of “global health security” has become a topic of academic and popular debate as health specialists gather to discuss various approaches to avert the next pandemic. In an increasingly interconnected world, the primary goal of this agenda is to identify and prevent health concerns that impose a burden on populations, society, and the global economy. One of the Plenary sessions of the 17th World Congress on Public Health (2nd – 6th May, Rome) entitled “No Public Health Without Planetary Health” speaks for itself.

“There is no such thing as the health of only one country. We are all responsible for the health of the planet and understanding and drawing on the Indigenous people’s knowledge systems that have been in place from time immemorial and authentically engaging with this knowledge and using it to inform our global health needs collectively and from an understanding that health is a human right and is, therefore, a priority above all”, – underlines Prof. Emma Te Patu, WFPHA Vice President & MAORI.

The promotion of global health is a vital mission in the modern world of globalization. It requires the cooperation of governmental bodies, global health organizations, medical professionals, educators, volunteers, and advocates within local communities.

Prof. Te Patu has defined the five global health initiatives that play a crucial role in the current context:

• Decolonising public health – Removing systemic barriers to Equity
• Proper resourcing of public health
• Legislative mechanisms to ensure countries are accountable for public health
• Health and growth of the public health workforce
• Accessible and relevant public health education

The WFPHA Vice President has also classified the biggest public health threats:

• Ego and the commercial financial imperative
• Reactionary responses as opposed to strategic responses
• Lack of proper resourcing

Why should climate change be considered the biggest global health threat of the 21st century?

Global crises are closely linked with climate change. Therefore, we must not overlook the existential threat that ecological degradation poses to planetary and human health.

“Climate change is definitely touching all the pillars and supports of our health: access to food, to safe drinking water and to clean air. It is changing the way we will protect our help and the way we need to prevent the worst impacts of climate change. People need to understand that climate change is not just something that will happen to the Planet in the future but it is affecting our health right now: it affects our lungs, and it causes diseases. We are already paying for it. I am convinced that addressing the causes of climate change today will be the best public health opportunity. It will bring benefits to the health system, to the economy, to the population, and make our society more sustainable. We need to increase the speed at the national level, set more ambitious goals, and, therefore, provide ourselves with well-covered health insurance. Our life and survival will depend very much on that.”, – underlines Maria Neira, Director of the Department of Public Health and Environment at the World Health Organization (WHO).

According to the WHO’s estimates:

• Between 2030 and 2050, it is expected that climate change will cause approximately 250 000 additional deaths per year from malnutrition, malaria, diarrhea, and heat stress.
• The estimated direct damage costs to health (i.e. excluding costs in health-determining sectors such as agriculture and water and sanitation) are between USD 2-4 billion per year by 2030.

The destabilizing impacts of climate change disproportionately affect the most disadvantaged. Many low-income countries are particularly vulnerable to sea-level rise, natural disasters, and food and water scarcity. As a result, the lack of resources can lead to forced migrations. How can we safeguard these “unhealthy” territories?

“We know that an unhealthy environment is responsible for 13 million deaths every year due to the lack of safe water or to the lack of clean air. The toxic air alone kills 7 million people annually. The creation of healthier environments will be the best investment we can make to protect our health by guaranteeing access to safe water, safe food, and clean air and by stopping to pollute our oceans with millions of tons of plastic. It’s important to bear in mind that plastic can end up on the human body because fish contains a high number of microplastics that we throw into the oceans. Only if people see the connection between climate change and their health, they will start to act and become more responsive and more determined to fight the causes of climate change”, says Prof. Neira.

The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the weaknesses and inequalities in our health systems in the face of global crises. The world requires equitable investment in research, surveillance, and preventive health to strengthen global resilience against these emerging risks. What measures should be taken to ensure global health security?

Prof. Te Patu has laid down the following list of priorities:

• Pandemic treaty – an instrument designed to prepare the world for the next pandemic
• More consultation with civil society
• Decolonising public health
• Greater collaboration between international, regional, national, and local public health communities
• Government transparency in messaging and addressing public health and what it entails

“We are all citizens of the world now. Pandemics do not recognise borders, so a united international response is vital. The same approach is used when we deal with the environment. If, for example, we do the deforestation in the Amazonia, in one way or another it will affect all of us”, concludes Maria Neira.

2022-2023 Annual Report Is Now Available!

Our 2022-2023 annual report is now available to view. WFPHA’s major initiatives and activities to protect people, prevent diseases, and promote health and wellbeing globally are highlighted in this report.

Driving Resilient Pediatric Immunization Programs Globally

Vaccination is one of the most powerful and cost-effective tools in the history of public health, with important health, economic, and social benefits. Pediatric vaccinations help protect children and adults from serious, preventable, and sometimes life-threatening diseases and are a key contributor to supporting global health security.

Globally, vaccination coverage has stagnated at around 85 percent from 2011 to 2019, with some regions reaching excellent results. However, since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, global childhood vaccinations have experienced the largest sustained decline in 30 years. Globally, in 2021 alone, 25 million children missed out on one or more doses of diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis (DTP3) through routine immunization services. 18 million of the 25 million children did not receive a single dose of DTP during the year, the vast majority of whom live in low- and middle-income countries, with India, Nigeria, Indonesia, Ethiopia, and the Philippines recording the highest numbers. The figure is extremely alarming because DTP3 is considered a marker for immunization coverage within and across countries and broader healthcare access; if children are missing these vaccinations, they are probably also missing preventive care visits and crucial vaccinations for many other diseases.

Nearly 25 million children missed their first measles dose in 2021. Almost 15 million children did not receive their needed second dose. In 2021, compared to 2019, nearly 7 million more children missed the third dose of polio vaccine. Inadequate coverage levels have already resulted in avoidable outbreaks of measles and polio, underscoring the vital role of immunization in keeping children, adolescents, adults, and societies healthy.

Conflicts worldwide and related population displacement are placing additional pressure on health systems and exacerbating disruptions to routine immunization programs. To date, the war in Ukraine has led to at least 5.6 million refugees being hosted in European Union countries. This has resulted in an increased threat of vaccine-preventable disease outbreaks in the region.

We live in a world where health systems are constantly facing threats, and preventing the spread of vaccine-preventable diseases is a key component of global health security. Recent pressures on the health system and geopolitical conflicts underscore the need for resilient immunization programs that are able to withstand major shocks and disruptions, quickly adapt to changing circumstances, and maintain high vaccine uptake and acceptance over time. Prioritizing immunization as an essential health service and ensuring pediatric immunization programs are resilient in the face of current and new threats are of the utmost importance to ensuring populations are healthy.

The WFPHA and the World Association for Infectious Diseases and Immunological Disorders organized a World Leadership Dialogue (WLD) session “Driving Resilient Pediatric Immunization Programs Globally” during the 17th World Congress on Public Health (WCPH), on May 02 to 06, 2023, to provide a platform to engage health leaders from governments, public health authorities, communities, and advocacy groups to discuss how to build resilient pediatric immunization systems through effective monitoring, communication, legislation, funding, and crisis-preparedness planning.

This WLD session is organized to highlight progress in pediatric vaccination and discuss the impact of COVID-19 and other external factors on vaccine coverage rates; to utilize real-life experiences from select countries to discuss barriers and opportunities to developing resilient immunization systems and ensuring health system strengthening; and to create a sense of urgency to drive policy decisions that support resilient immunization systems and concrete crisis preparedness plans globally to ensure efficient pediatric immunization programs.