Health and Healthcare Systems

Climate adaptation, digital healthcare and antimicrobial resistance: Healthcare highlights from my week at Davos

Health beyond Healthcare session at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2025 in Davos-Klosters, Switzerland.

From AMR to maternal health, discussions spanned across a wide range of healthcare issues. Image: World Economic Forum/Gabriel Lado

Shyam Bishen
Head, Centre for Health and Healthcare; Member of the Executive Committee, World Economic Forum
This article is part of: World Economic Forum Annual Meeting
  • The Davos Compact on AMR aims to unlock funding and bring down deaths.
  • The World Economic Forum has established Singapore as a healthcare ‘lighthouse’, aiming to share best practices with the global community.
  • Public-private partnerships will be key to making progress and unlocking financing.

As if there weren’t already plenty of health issues to discuss at Davos, the week began with President Trump’s decision to exit the World Health Organization (WHO) as one of his first acts after returning to office. This move sparked discussions about how the global health community will adapt, particularly in terms of funding and leadership.

At the same time, there were many constructive conversations and advances made, focusing on tackling systemic issues and creating a more equitable and future-proofed healthcare system for all.

Here are some of my highlights from a busy few days at the World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting 2025.

1. Increased collaboration on antimicrobial resistance (AMR)

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is one of the biggest health challenges we’re facing right now and so I was uplifted by a new initiative to increase collaboration with the private sector. The Davos Compact on AMR unites input from four major agencies – the World Health Organization, the World Organisation for Animal Health, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and the United Nations Environment Programme – with the aim of unlocking public and private financing to tackle AMR-associated deaths.

As well as governments of many G20 countries, we will be working with some key private sector players such as Novo Nordisk and Merck as well as institutions like the Wellcome Trust and the Gates Foundation.

Blood steam and lower respiratory infections are most commonly linked with antimicrobial resistance.
Blood steam and lower respiratory infections are most commonly linked with antimicrobial resistance. Image: Our World in Data

2. Establishing new lighthouses for healthcare excellence

We have established Singapore as our first-ever healthcare ‘lighthouse’ – leading the way in modern healthcare best practices. As part of a move to learn from its healthcare successes, particularly around equity and technology, we have signed an agreement with the National University of Singapore. We will work closely with the university’s School of Medicine to understand how they are making use of digital health technologies and AI in healthcare and bring some of those lessons to the rest of the world.

3. Tackling maternal health and child mortality

Working through our Global Alliance for Women’s Health initiative, we have signed a letter of intent with Nigeria to improve maternal health and child mortality. Child and maternal mortality rates in Nigeria are among some of the highest in the world, representing around 20% of the global burden.

This health inequity has serious repercussions for economies, and the Forum’s alliance aims to boost research, innovation and investment in women’s health.

Many of the countries with the highest child mortality rates are in Africa.
Many of the countries with the highest child mortality rates are in Africa. Image: Our World in Data

4. Investing in climate adaptation

Climate change will have a profound impact on people, their health, and economies, with around 3.6 billion people living in areas highly susceptible to climate change. It will cause an estimated additional 14.5 million deaths and $12.5 trillion in economic costs between today and 2050.

However, our research suggests if we were to invest $65 billion over the next five to eight years in enhanced prevention, improved diagnostics and novel treatments, 6.5 million lives could be saved and economic losses reduced by $5.8 trillion. This sounds like a big number but it equates to just 5% of the normal annual R&D spending by the pharma industry.

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5. Scaling up digital healthcare

Technology offers us a groundbreaking opportunity to save lives and improve health, including by digitally empowering patients and democratizing healthcare. As part of our drive to accelerate the responsible use of tech through our Digital Healthcare Transformation Initiative, we will start working with the UAE to set up a digital health transformation network. This will involve setting up an ecosystem with public and private players to scale up the technology, particularly around AI for diagnostics and delivery.

Despite its potential, AI adoption in healthcare remains slow. Our report, The Future of AI-Enabled Health: Leading the Way, highlights some of the barriers, including complexity deterring policymakers; misaligned technical and strategic decisions; and fragmented regulations lowering confidence.

While these advances are great to see, it brings me back to my opening theme: making progress on them will require ongoing financing and cooperation. Despite the news coming out of the US, we see stakeholders – be they governments, the public sector, the private sector and international organizations – increasingly recognizing the need to come together.

So in this vein, it is vitally important that leaders continue to prioritize public-private partnerships. The Intelligent Age offers great promise for healthcare reform, and now is the time to double down on collaboration to address the challenges that will affect us all.

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