During the United Nations General Assembly High-Level Week, I was honoured to participate in the Last Mile Lunch: Implementation for Impact on Rare Diseases, Brain and NCDs hosted by the Permanent Mission of Switzerland to the United Nations, New York.
Building upon the Consensus Framework: The Last Mile Action Agenda launched at the United Nations, our dialogue focused on turning commitment into practice across three imperatives: accelerating equitable early detection, strengthening partnerships for access through education and capacity building, and mobilising sustainable financing.
In my intervention, I spoke as the Inaugural Global Health Ambassador of the WHO Foundation, from an Equity and Access lens, drawing on my service as an AstraZeneca Global Breast Cancer Care Council Member, where our development of the Breast Cancer Care Quality Index provides a vital framework to embed patient-centred standards across the continuum of care, and as Founder-President of the Wellbeing Foundation Africa where our implementation demonstrates that innovation endures only when anchored in system readiness and lived realities.
As I emphasised, effective implementation must be assessed through universality of reach, equity in timely access, the integration of patient navigation within care pathways, and the assurance of consistent quality standards across all health system contexts, whether urban or rural.
Reflections from distinguished colleagues, including Nobel Laureate Harold E. Varmus, former Director of the U.S. National Cancer Institute, highlighted both the scientific progress made possible through sustained collaboration and the continued responsibility to ensure that such progress is shared universally.
I thank H.E. Pascale Baeriswyl, Ambassador and Permanent Representative of Switzerland to the United Nations in New York, as the luncheon reaffirmed that closing the last mile demands reimagined public–private partnerships, which are not siloed or disconnected from health system realities, but grounded in equity, system readiness, and the experiences of patients.
