Want to stop an outbreak in its tracks? Start with trust

The article discusses the actions needed to build more resilient and responsive health systems following a dedicated session at the World Economic Forum on the 21 January 2020 on the same topic. On the panel was Jayasree Iyer of the Access to Medicine Foundation, who discussed the gaps in global health safety net and why they are widening:

“Vaccination is all about preventing the unseen enemy from getting to you. The same [goes] with antibiotics—we take them for granted because we think that we're going to live forever, but to make the delivery of such medicines effective and far-reaching, you need to build that sense of trust. And that's the biggest drawback with the work that we do. You know, the pharmaceutical industry is just not trusted by the community."

The article describes why trust is crucial to tackling society's major challenges and explains why the Access to Medicine Foundation is focused on developing trust at the community level.