Statement on the role of Research and Innovation to Achieve Health for All and Sustainable Development

67th World Health Assembly, Geneva, 22 May 2014

Commitments to the Millennium Development Goals have made a major contribution to the success of global health efforts over the past decade, helping to sustain focus on some of the greatest global health challenges. The post-2015 development agenda must build on these achievements, to ensure that Healthy lives and access to health services for all can be achieved in an equitable and sustainable way.

Achieving equitable and sustainable Health for all requires continued support for Research and Development for new or improved medicines, vaccines, diagnostics, devices and other health tools that work for and are accessible to those most in need. Continuous investment of human and financial resources in science, technology and innovation to improve health and equity is essential to achieve economic and social development.

Strong political leadership, as well as international and multi-sectoral collaboration will be needed for achieving innovations in health care and delivery. In particular, we need policies, incentives and sustainable financing to fully support research and development of affordable and accessible vaccines, medicines, diagnostics, devices and other health tools for diseases that mostly affect low- and middle-income countries and/or marginalized populations. And we need a commitment to the development and implementation of policies that facilitate capacity building, collaboration and knowledge and technology sharing.

We urge Member States and Delegates at the World Health Assembly to explicitly support health research and related policies and capacity building as a core component of a new Agenda for equitable health and sustainable development.

Download the PDF version of this statement