Good leadership means facing global challenges together

The world is moving faster than ever before, and the threats we encounter can move just as quickly. In the face of our most pressing problems, from epidemics to poverty to climate change, this year’s World Economic Forum (WEF) asked a question: what does responsible and responsive leadership mean today? Questions like these can easily be the preserve of management or career self-help books, but at WEF we saw leadership in action in the form of partnership and collaboration of many kinds.

For Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, this meant welcoming a host of new impressive partners whose unique contributions will enable vaccines to reach more children around the world. We announced a new collaboration with logistics giant DHL, whose delivery expertise will now help vaccines reach the most vulnerable, starting with a pilot in Kenya. We also joined forces with Unilever whose target is to reach one billion families with the aim of using their behaviour change capacity to promote both hand washing with their Lifebuoy soap campaign and vaccination to prevent diarrhoea and pneumonia in India. Together, our interventions can save more children from these preventable diseases.

The last mile of vaccine delivery can be the hardest. Photo: Gavi / Evelyn Hockstein

This year’s meeting saw the first results of Gavi’s innovation platform INFUSE, which scales up proven solutions for improving vaccine delivery. Thanks to a new agreement with Google.org, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Gavi, Nexleaf’s temperature monitoring technology will be placed in fridges to collect and send back data. This will allow developing countries to map out the entire national cold chain system, and pinpoint where they need to take action to keep vaccines cold and safe.

Vaccine refrigerators will be monitored using the Nexleaf Analytics ColdTrace wireless remote temperature technology. Photo: Nexleaf Analytics

Leading through partnership may be a common tactic now, but it is hardly new. This time last year, Gavi and Merck announced a joint commitment to fast track Ebola vaccines so they would be ready in case of another outbreak. One year on tests have demonstrated the safety and efficacy of the Ebola vaccine, and proved the value of our partnership. Merck have committed to submitting a full licencing application by the end of 2017. Over the next 12 months, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) is bringing this to reality, and at WEF leaders from politics and business took to the stage to explain why preparing for epidemics ahead of time is in everyone’s interest. Gavi will work closely with CEPI to be sure vaccines that are relevant for developing countries, have a market-place and are stockpiled, ensuring vaccines are available when the next epidemic strikes.

Gavi itself is another example of a far-reaching partnership launched at WEF... Since our foundation at Davos 2000, our Alliance has averted 8 million deaths and vaccinated more than 580 million children.

These acts of cooperation unite people and resources around the world for a common cause. For immunisation, they recognise the fact that we all need protection against disease, whoever or wherever we are. In a world where travel and trade make us so interconnected, where global challenges remain unsolved and political uncertainty looks set to continue, we need this collaborative spirit more than ever.

Just as herd immunity is the best protection from an infectious disease, working together is the best chance we have to solve these problems. By acknowledging that, we can make our world stronger, safer and healthier. That is true leadership.