Covid has amplified an established trend: health is the priority concern of our fellow citizens and acts as a social marker, a vector of inclusion or exclusion, of self-worth or discrimination, through obesity and metabolic or modern civilisation diseases.
Covid has also shown that infectious diseases are multiplying and intensifying: 50 years ago there were only one or two new epidemics or zoonoses per decade, now there are several each year!
Our era is marked by this paradox: the record pace of Covid vaccine development alongside huge inertia in the face of the causes of these epidemics: massive deforestation, intensive agriculture, loss of biodiversity, global warming…
Furthermore, a lack of scientific knowledge is leading part of the population to become polarised, between pro- and anti-innovation. This simplistic approach, fuelled by the media and social networks, is creating permanent information chaos.
What we need is a global and systemic approach to health, harmonising policies for the common good. The challenges of clinical research should be better shared between all the stakeholders – public authorities, associations, laboratories, scientific societies, etc. – as well as by citizens and patients, who are not sufficiently involved.
Odile Peixoto
Director of BVA’s health department
Key figures
- $6,200 billion: global health market.
- $230 billion: estimate of the global e-health market in 2023.
- €977 billion: global drug market in 2019.