On January 24, 2014 Dr. Lawrence Summers, Chair of the Lancet Commission on Investing in Health (CIH), joined fellow CIH commissioner Linah Mohohlo and philanthropist Bill Gates on a panel at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland to discuss the potential for a grand convergence initiative. The session was moderated by World Bank President Jim Yong Kim. CIH commissioners Gavin Yamey, Mthuli Ncube, Karen Helene Ulltveit-Moe, and Seth Berkley were present at the panel on the grand convergence. View a short video on the grand convergence, which premiered during this WEF panel, on the DCP3 homepage.
The goals of the initiative, as summarized in a recent piece in the New York Times by Michael de la Merced, include:
- Reducing deaths of children under age 5 to 16-per-1,000 live births
- Reducing annual deaths from AIDS to 8-per-1o0,000 people
- Reducing tuberculosis deaths to 4-per-100,000
- Curb death and illness caused by noncommunicable diseases
The grand convergence initiative was developed out of the commission’s report, Global Health 2035: A World Converging within a Generation, which presents the idea that the world can achieve a "grand convergence," bringing preventable infectious disease, maternal and child death down to universally low levels, by 2035. The report was released in a special December, 2013 edition of The Lancet.
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(Left to right) World Bank President Jim Yong Kim, CIH Commissioners Linah Mohohlo, Karen Helene Ulltveit-Moe, Seth Berkley, and Gavin Yamey, philanthropist Bill Gates, CIH Chair Lawrence Summers, and CIH Commissioner Mthuli Ncube. |
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