In recent years the threats have increased, crises have multiplied. Health policy now has to rely on multilateral cooperation, explained Professor Dr Pries at the World Health Summit in Berlin. Global health, he said, is a team sport.
ADVERTISEMENT ADVERTISEMENTFor six years, Prof Dr Axel R. Pries has been president of the World Health Summit (WHS) in Berlin. The physician and physiologist previously served as dean and board member of Charité. In this interview with Euronews, Pries outlines one way to strengthen the resilience of the health system at international level.
At the World Health Summit Regional Meeting 2026 in Nairobi in April, you said: "We don't have the virus, but we have a political virus." What exactly did you mean by that?
Prof Dr Axel R. Pries: We are dealing with a global situation in which many countries are looking at health increasingly from a very national, sometimes even nationalist perspective.
And I call it a virus because it is spreading across the whole world. It is a pandemic. You can see it in every region. The problem with this virus is that it is a major obstacle to good solutions. Of course, you need local solutions. You have to stand up for people on the ground and do what they need locally. But this has to be coordinated at a global level.
The Covid pandemic was a clear sign that you cannot tackle problems purely at local level – and that also applies to many other areas, including mental health, NCDs (editor's note: non-communicable diseases) and others. That is why we need to revive multilateral mechanisms and give them fresh momentum.
The partial withdrawal of the US from global health policy has been a talking point for some time, and you have argued that Europe should take on a new leading role. Is Europe really up to it?
Prof Dr Axel R. Pries: I would not say that Europe should be the leader. But Europe should be one of the leading actors – and it absolutely has what it takes.
Europe is a very strong hub for medical innovation, from research through to practical application. Only a few days ago, the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to researchers from Berlin and Würzburg for their work on optogenetics. And there are major companies in Europe, from medical technology and pharmaceuticals through to other sectors. In other words, Europe clearly has the right foundations.
Europe also has experience of cooperation between countries with very different political and social systems. That experience can be extremely valuable for international collaboration.
You mentioned that the Nobel Prize went, among others, to German researchers. What role does Germany itself play within Europe?
Prof Dr Axel R. Pries: Within Europe, Germany can certainly send signals and also assume a certain leadership role. As the largest economy in Europe, it is almost predestined to do so, and particularly in the medical sector it has a lot to offer again, from science through to application.
But Germany can definitely only do this as part of a wider ensemble, working on an equal footing with others, for example with France and the United Kingdom.
If you think of Denmark and, say, Novo, these are huge companies based in different European countries which, together, can play a decisive role on the global market.
How do you see this new global order in light of the US stepping back and the dependencies on China?
Prof Dr Axel R. Pries: If we fail now to agree on common strategies, things will become very, very difficult. Europe also suffers from its diversity, because it can sometimes take quite a long time before threats are addressed jointly. But Europe also benefits from the richness that this diversity brings.
The time has come to tackle this vigorously, so that Europe does not allow strategic dependencies to emerge in the health sector whose consequences can only be corrected later at great cost.
In Germany, politicians have for some time been talking about introducing a Health Security Act to close a historic gap in the country's crisis preparedness and security legislation. A draft is due to be discussed in early 2027. Is that a step in the right direction?
Prof Dr Axel R. Pries: Yes, if the aim of such a Health Security Act is to make Germany more resilient in the face of global health crises, then that is, of course, an important step.
It is part of what is known as pandemic preparedness. But here too, it will ultimately become clear that health issues can only be solved in multilateral partnership. If every country tends – as we saw in part during the Covid pandemic – to hold back critical goods exclusively for its own needs and not share them with others, then the entire chain collapses.
No country today can produce medicines or vaccines entirely on its own. It is an international network. This draft law is very important because the work on it forces like-minded countries to reach sensible agreements among themselves and to set themselves up as a network.
And it would be ideal if all of this were to happen under the umbrella of the UN (editor's note: United Nations), in this case the WHO (editor's note: World Health Organization).
One proposal at global level is to conclude bilateral agreements on the exchange of health data – for example, development aid in return for health data. Is that how a network should work?
Prof Dr Axel R. Pries: That is a core element of the America First Global Health Strategy. And in fact, the name of this strategy already highlights a fundamental flaw: you cannot claim on the one hand that you are always first and on the other that you are building partnerships.
The agreements that follow are often not genuinely fair or based on equality, but exploit existing power imbalances. I am therefore extremely sceptical about such arrangements. If two partners sit at the table and one of them is far more powerful than the other, you cannot end up with a truly fair agreement. Trying to solve these issues bilaterally is, in my view, the wrong approach.
The only way to create fair conditions between strong and weaker partners is to develop an overarching common framework, which the WHO can then implement.
This means that the international community does, of course, need data on pathogens and similar information. But the international community should also ensure that the countries providing these data receive resources in return. A fair exchange – data flowing in one direction and resources or vaccines in the other – has to be organised multilaterally.
So you are calling for global health to be organised as multilaterally as possible, ideally under the umbrella of the WHO?
Prof Dr Axel R. Pries: Of course, we also have to make sure that the mechanisms within the WHO work properly. A multilateral institution too has to be constantly renewed and reinvigorated.
A reform of the WHO would certainly be no bad thing, but it should not happen under the influence of the 'virus' I mentioned at the start – the idea that multilateral structures are no longer wanted. Instead, we need to strengthen multilateral mechanisms.
To give an example from a completely different field: when people want to play football together in an orderly way, the first thing they do is appoint someone as referee. Many things in life only work well on a multilateral basis. One-on-one contests exist in sport too. But if you are playing a team sport, you have to organise yourselves. Global health is a team sport.
Given the multiple crises we are currently facing, is the world even capable of taking on this team task – and seeing it as such?
Prof Dr Axel R. Pries: It is not easy, and there are certainly groups that try to play football together but cannot agree and end up at each other's throats. But we have to manage it, because we live on one planet.
We do not want to face a Covid pandemic every five years. We want to live healthy lives. That is something every human being essentially wants. So why should we not be able, in the long run, to overcome the factors that stand in the way of that?
I believe people are capable of learning and will realise that exaggerated nationalism simply does not help here. It is always difficult to hand powers over to higher-level institutions. The last time the UN system underwent major reform was after the horrific experiences of the Second World War.
I hope that this time we will be able to promote multilateralism without such a catastrophe, purely out of a sense of insight. That will require both determination and a certain optimism.
