Director of Fiocruz Minas will be part of new WHO Board

The director of Fiocruz Minas, Zélia Profeta, was invited to be a member of the Council on the Economics of Health for All, recently created by the World Health Organization (WHO). The invitation was sent by WHO’s Director-General Tedros Adhanom and Professor Mariana Mazzucato of University College London, who will coordinate the Council.

The creation of the Council on the Economy of Health for All was announced in November 2020, during the 73rd World Health Assembly. The proposal is to put the concept of “health for all” at the center of discussions when thinking about creation of value and economic growth. The idea is to include health financing not as a cost, but as a long-term investment for a “healthy economy”, based on the foundation that health and the economy are interdependent.

In the invitation sent to Director Zélia Profeta, the Director-General of WHO stressed that if there is a lesson from Covid-19, it is that health for all is key to resilience and stability in global economies. According to Tedros Adhanom, no actor will be able to solve the problem, thus, new forms of public and private investments in health will be necessary to achieve cooperation.

The Council will be comprised only of women. There will be 11 members from different institutions in the world.