At the 79th WHO, World Health Assembly in Geneva, I was honoured to join the Catalysts on the Rise session convened by the Health Innovation Exchange, Reckitt Catalyst and the Canton of Geneva, alongside an extraordinary group of leaders, including Elhadj As Sy of the Kofi Annan Foundation and Chancellor of the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, Dr Ouma Oluga, Principal Secretary for Health of Kenya, Temie Giwa-Tubosun, Founder of Life bank, Kat Esser of Amazon’s Global Impact Accelerator, and Sergio Lopez and Susannah Herbert of Reckitt Catalyst, in a conversation moderated by the visionary Pradeep Kakkattil of HIEx.

The first Reckitt Catalyst Thought Leadership publication, launched at this session, names something I have long believed and long worked within, that women-led health innovation does not have a shortage of ideas but an adoption problem, and the missing middle between a pilot that works and a government procurement that follows is where most of the most important innovations are lost, overwhelmingly affecting founders who are women and who are building from the Global South.

At the Wellbeing Foundation Africa, our work across Nigeria has shown us firsthand that the barriers facing a woman health entrepreneur are about what happens after the evidence is there, after the model works, when there is no pathway forward, no government champion with the mandate and authority to integrate, and no patient capital willing to bridge the gap between a proven demonstration and adoption at the scale the system actually needs. Genuine public-private partnership, rooted in patient capital, long-term institutional commitment and shared accountability, is what this moment demands and what the leaders in Geneva this week have the power and the responsibility to deliver.

Governments must procure from women-led health enterprises at scale and against defined timelines, investors must match their capital structures to the long adoption cycles of health system change, and civil society must serve as the connective tissue that keeps every partnership honest and community-centred across every stage of delivery.

 

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