Christian Bréchot has attended the World Health Summit in Berlin

Sunday October 9th 2016, Christian Bréchot has participated to the World Health Summit 2016, one of the major international events in the field. The Summit is organized by the M8 Alliance of Academic Health Centres, Universities and National Academies, under the presidency of Pr Detlev Ganten, from La Charité Berlin, and the high patronage of Mrs Angela Merkel, M. Francois Hollande and M. Jean-Claude Junker.

Christian Bréchot has given a speech during the infectious diseases session and presented his vision of the necessary means to better prepare the fight against the next epidemics, in a context of post-Ebola and ongoing Zika epidemics.

He highlighted the following challenges: the need to keep performing an excellent basic research, to reinforce local capacities through a better teaching and training in biomedical research, and to support the development of local infrastructures, in particular to improve surveillance and epidemiology, including for the collection, the storage and the analysis of data through reinforcement of informatics tools.

C. Bréchot has also participated to a discussion on Global Health Security with 20 high level representatives debating of the major challenges in the field and the way to face them.

The World Health Summit has the mission to improve healthcare at the global level and to promote the equitable access to medication and prevention. It is dedicated to inform and influence the decision makers and to provide recommendations to face the future healthcare challenges.

The Summit host high level representatives from politics, research, medicine and education. This year several ministres participated, as well as industries and patient associations representatives, scientific leaders including Pr Elisabeth Blackburn and Pr Rolf Zinkernagel, both Nobel Prices, and Pr Emmanuelle Charpentier, who discovered the CRISPR/CAS9 mechanism currently revolutionizing modern biology.

Besides infectious diseases, the other topics covered by the Summit 2016 were migration and refugee health, technological innovation, translational research, women empowerment and the sustainable development goals.