It’s no secret that healthcare systems across the world are under huge pressure resulting in “a stagnation of health progress on key health indicators in recent years”, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
Take one of the pressure points, chronic disease. On the current trajectory, exacerbated by ageing populations and climate change, cardiovascular diseases, cancer, diabetes and respiratory illnesses etc will account for 90 million deaths each year (86% of total annual deaths).
That’s a 90% increase in absolute numbers since 2019. Stefan Woxström, SVP Europe and Canada, AstraZeneca, puts it bluntly: “We cannot build more hospitals to deal with that.” He sees that the only way forward is to focus more on disease prevention, which gets just 3% of healthcare spending currently, and partnerships.
Check out the rest of the feature here
