What is the World Health Summit for?

摘要

We thank Richard Horton for his thoughtful critique (April 5, p1195) of the World Health Summit and the M8 Alliance of Academic Health Centers, Universities, and National Academies. As a supporter of both activities since their earliest days, The Lancet's input is especially important to us. We agree that the world does need a World Health Summit and aver that it is the one held in Berlin, Germany, in October. In the short time since the World Health Summit and the M8 have been founded, our accomplishments have been substantial. The World Health Summit's mission to provide a multisectoral platform, hosted by academia, for discussion of the world's most pressing problems is unique, and the initial meeting was so successful that it became an annual meeting with attendance increasing every year. The annual gathering in Berlin allows a whole-of-society approach to the complexities of global health. Strong testimony to the effect of the World Health Summit is the growing number of M8 member institutions and their desire to hold regional meetings to focus on issues that pertain to more local health challenges. Even though some of our 16 members have joined in only the past 2 years or 3 years, our partner institutions have created an increasingly rich network of relations and collaborations. Through these interactions, the world view of many of our academic health centres has expanded beyond that of the specific patients whom we serve. We are convinced that academia has to take more responsibility for the world's most pressing problems.