Update | December 2025
Spotlight
In November, the Center and the Global Council on Inequality, AIDS, and Pandemics launched its seminal report: “Breaking the Inequality-Pandemic Cycle—Building true health security in a global age.”
The Council, whose members include the Center’s Director Matthew Kavanagh and Fellow Sanjana Mukherjee as well as Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz, Professor Michael Marmot, former Namibian First Lady Monica Geingos, identified four key findings:
- Inequality within and between countries fuels pandemics, which in turn increases inequality.
- Failure to tackle key inequalities has left the world unprepared for the next pandemic.
- Insufficiently rapid action on today’s pandemics reinforces the cycle.
- The cycle can be interrupted.
The Council presented the report to South Africa President Cyril Ramaphosa and G20 health ministers, urging bold political action to disrupt the cycle.
Hear Matthew Kavanagh discuss the report and its findings on POLITICO Future Pulse , POLITICO Pulse , BBC World Service (27.16 – 33.36), SABC , Newzroom Afrika , Daily Maverick , and SciDev .
Featured Publication: New Report from UN Special Rapporteur Dr. Tlaleng Mofokeng
This past month saw exciting news for Senior Scholar Dr. Tlaleng Mofokeng, who is finishing up her six-year tenure as United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Health.
At the end of October, Dr. Mofokeng presented her final UN Annual Thematic Report, titled “Health and Care Workers: The Oath Takers & Defenders of the Right to Health.” In an Interactive Dialogue, she responded to questions from UN member states on the report.
The week also featured a vibrant three-day art exhibition celebrating Dr. Mofokeng’s tenure. The themed days, “Realizing the Right to Health in Conflict and Humanitarian Settings,” “Feminist Joy Making as a Revolutionary Act,” and “Friends of the Right to Health,” highlighted her legacy and featured talks from her friends and family. The week also featured her talk at Fordham Law School, “Leveraging Domestic Legislative and Judicial Processes to Advance International Human Rights.”
👉 Read the Thematic Report here .
Advancing Diagnostics Equity in Nairobi
The Diagnostics Equity Consortium was active at the African Society for Laboratory Medicine (ASLM) LabCoP annual meeting in Nairobi to issue a Call to Action, urging countries to roll out new innovative near-point-of-care TB tests.
The Center’s Sharonann Lynch spoke on the importance of national roadmaps to introduce and scale-up the tests, as well as other WHO-recommended rapid diagnostics (WRDs) in order to achieve 100% facility coverage within five years.
“Innovation alone is not enough; it must be matched by ambition to turn policy into action.”
👉 Read the Call to Action here . Download the presentation here .
Talk with UN Independent Expert Attiya Waris
On 30 October, the Center had the pleasure of hosting Attiya Waris, the UN Independent Expert on Foreign Debt, Human Rights, and International Solidarity for a talk, titled “The Impacts of a Fragmented Fiscal Architecture on Health.” Professor Waris spoke in conversation with Center Director Matthew Kavanagh on the interconnection between the global financial system and health outcomes worldwide.
👉 Watch the talk here .
The Center Launches Social Media Platforms
This past month, we officially launched our social media platforms. Follow us to stay up-to-date on the latest news in global health policy and share our platforms with friends and colleagues who may be interested.
🔗 X (formerly Twitter)
🔗 Bluesky