Lives Before Profits
Channel: Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung
Date: 24/10/2022

A Conversation with Winnie Byanyima on Global Health Justice

The Covid-19 pandemic is continuing to affect people worldwide and the negative economic impacts of the pandemic are now being coupled with drastic price increases for fuel and food. It is therefore time to take a closer look at where we stand in terms of global public health and inequalities.

As the World Health Summit 2022 in Berlin comes to a close, we will be joined by Winnie Byanyima, Executive Director of UNAIDS and an Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations. Together we will reflect on how inequalities have been driving the social and economic impacts of public health threats like HIV and COVID-19, thereby exacerbating tensions on the fiscal and health capacities of developing countries in tackling pandemics. The conversation hopes to shed light on how inequitable access to vaccines, therapeutics and diagnostics continues to tip the scales in favour of wealthy countries, already on a path to recovery. At the same time, Countries of the Global South are beset with multiple crises and SDGs are being thrown into reverse. In her conversation with Imme Scholz, President of the Heinrich-Böll-Foundation, Byanyima will explain her vision for new global health architecture designed to help humanity respond to future pandemics, based on principles of human rights and social justice.


With:
- Winnie Byanyima, Executive Director of UNAIDS and Under-Secretary-General of the UN
- Dr. Imme Scholz, President, Heinrich-Böll-Foundation, Germany

Winnie Byanyima is the Executive Director of UNAIDS and an Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations. A passionate and longstanding champion of social justice and gender equality, Ms Byanyima leads the United Nations’ efforts to end the AIDS epidemic by 2030. Ms Byanyima believes that health care is a human right and was an early champion of a People’s Vaccine against the coronavirus that is available and free of charge to everyone, everywhere. Before joining UNAIDS, Ms Byanyima served as the Executive Director of Oxfam International, a confederation of 20 civil society organizations working in more than 90 countries worldwide, empowering people to create a future that is secure, just and free from poverty.

Dr. Imme Scholz serves as President of the Berlin-based Heinrich-Böll-Foundations since April 2022. Prior to that she had been Deputy Director of the German Development Institute (Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik, DIE) since 2009. She is an Honorary professor for Global Sustainability and its Normative Fundamentals at the Center for Ethics and Responsibility (ZEV) at Bonn-Rhein-Sieg University of Applied Sciences in St. Augustin. Imme Scholz is Deputy Chair of the Council for Sustainable Development (RNE), where she has been active since 2013. In addition, she is the Co-Chair of the Independent Group of Scientists, an organisation that has been commissioned by the United Nations to prepare the second Global Sustainable Development Report.