8 December 2022

Strategic Public Private Partnerships are required to tackle cardiovascular disease more effectively. That was the consensus at a panel discussion on CVD at the European Health Summit in Brussels in December.

The session “Investing in cardiovascular health for a healthier and economically stronger future” addressed why governments should invest more strategically in CVD; moving the focus from intervention to prevention; how health systems can better monitor patients at risk and incentivize better policy responses and clinical decisions; and how data can drive investment to where it is needed most.

The panel discussion was chaired by Hatice Kücük, Executive Director of the G20 Health and Development Partnership and featured experts from industry, government and academia.

All agreed that there needs to be a mobilization of resources devoted to tackling the world’s no. 1 killer. However, industry cannot do this alone – nor can government. There must be a collaboration of all affected healthcare system stakeholders, in the form of strategic public-private partnerships.

Prof. Rifat Atun, Professor of Global Health Systems, Harvard University and co-Chair of the Council for Heart Health, said that strategic partnerships are not an option but very necessary to identify shared problems and shared solutions. He pointed to the decline in CVD mortality up to 2010 but since then rates have plateaued for five years and then rose – and continue to rise further following the covid pandemic.

Prof. Dennis Ostwald, CEO & Founder, WiFOR Institute, said that health investments should be made where they can have the most impact – such as heart health. He said that more than 4% of EU GDP is lost every year because of our failure to prevent CVD. If we halved CVD, we could gain 2% of economic wealth. He suggested that CVD targets could be embedded in the UN SDG goals for 2030 – particularly for low- and middle-income countries.

Prof. Robert Babela, State Secretary at the Slovak Ministry of Health, told the audience at the European Health Summit that the direct and indirect costs of CVD means it has become a heavy burden on the Slovakian economy. He says that he is working in public-private partnerships to find solutions and that he plans to use better data to help demonstrate the value of investment in CVD management to his government colleagues at the Ministry of Finance.

Marie-France Tschudin, President & International Chief Commercial Officer at Novartis, said that there is no reason why we couldn’t prevent up to 80% of CVD deaths. She believes it is not that difficult to prevent the vast majority of the 1.8 million deaths per year from CVD in Europe. With just some simple changes, amazing results can be achieved. She gave examples of how improvements to care pathways can yield results.

Marie-France told the audience that European health systems have the diagnostic tools – often just a simple blood test, digital tools that were not available twenty years ago and readily available medicines. She told the audience that somehow we have a level of acceptance of heart disease that we would not have for other diseases and that needs to change.

You can watch the full panel discussion here: INVESTING IN CARDIOVASCULAR HEALTH FOR HEALTHIER AND ECONOMICALLY STRONGER FUTURE – EHS 2022 on Vimeo.