WHO chief urges BRICS leaders to boost health resilience and sustainable financing

At the BRICS Leaders' Summit, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus emphasized that health is central to the bloc’s four priority areas: resilience, innovation, cooperation and sustainability. He advocated for bolstering primary health care, disease surveillance, early-warning systems and local manufacturing of medical supplies. Tedros urged the use of science, digital health tools and artificial intelligence for public health, insisting that benefits remain universally accessible.

He called for concrete cross-border actions, including completing the Pathogen Access and Benefit-Sharing annex of the WHO Pandemic Agreement. Sustainable health financing and a more coherent global health architecture were also highlighted. The summit’s New Delhi Declaration endorsed deeper cooperation, the creation of a BRICS Integrated Early Warning System, and a new expert group on Traditional, Complementary and Integrative Medicine, supported by India’s Ministry of Ayush and Minister Prataprao Jadhav.