Each year G20 Presidancy is allocated to a new country, on December 1, 2016 Germany was awarded the role, which during it’s G20 Presidency the German Government, led by Angela Merkel, leveraged “health” for the first time on G20 agendas by creating the Health Ministers track.
On May 19-20, 2017, at the invitation of Federal Minister of Health Hermann Gröhe, the first G20 Health Ministers meeting took place in Berlin, Germany. The purpose to focus on combating global health hazards and be better prepared for future health crises such as pandemics.
At that meeting the participants participated in a respiratory virus pandemic health emergency simulation called MARS (Mountain Associated Respiratory Syndrome). The exercise focused on multilateral coordination, with WHO’s crisis response mechanisms and the International Health Regulations (IHR). This meeting marks the start of “Global Health” becoming a constant on the G20 agenda.
Following this 2017 meeting The Center for Global Health was founded in by Prof. Andrea Winkler and Prof. Clarissa Prazeres da Costa. Germany is leading the way with global health policy, their “goal is that research results are quickly translated into meaningful and effective political measures. This is the only way we can achieve the goals for sustainable development of the United Nations, to which the Federal Republic of Germany has also committed itself.” [1]
“Due to the increasing interconnectedness of our world, health has also become an issue that needs to be viewed globally.”
In 2016 China held last G20 meeting, which “laid the foundations” for “anchoring the topic of international health in the communiqué of the Heads of State and Government for the first time”. In her opening statement, Merkel even mentioned the 1918 Spanish flu! [2]