A new commentary published in The Lancet by experts from the Asian Development Bank, Health Care Without Harm and Unitaid argues that the ongoing conflict in the Middle East is exposing a challenge that extends far beyond a single crisis: global health systems are highly vulnerable to disruptions in energy, manufacturing and supply chains.
The current conflict in the Middle East is a reminder that health systems do not operate in isolation from the wider world. As energy markets react and supply chains come under pressure, the effects are reaching hospitals, clinics and patients around the world through higher costs and disruptions to essential health products.
While the current immediate cause may be conflict, the underlying lesson is broader. Global health is in an era where disruption is becoming more common. Geopolitical tensions, extreme weather events, supply chain shocks and emerging health threats are all placing increasing pressure on the systems that produce, transport and deliver life-saving medicines and technologies.
For decades, global health innovation has focused on a vital question: how do we develop better tools to fight disease? That question remains as important as ever. But a second question is becoming increasingly urgent: how do we ensure those tools remain available when the world becomes less predictable? In many ways, this is becoming one of the defining innovation challenges of our time.
Climate change offers a clear example. Discussions about climate and health often focus on the direct impacts on human health, from heat stress and air pollution to changing patterns of infectious disease. These risks are real and growing. Yet climate change is also testing the reliability of the systems on which health care depends.
Extreme heat can affect the performance and storage of medicines and diagnostics. Floods and storms can damage infrastructure and disrupt transport networks. Manufacturing facilities and supply chains can be interrupted. As these events become more frequent and severe, maintaining access to essential health products will become increasingly challenging.
The same is true during periods of geopolitical instability. Different crises may have different causes, but they often expose the same vulnerability: health systems depend on complex global networks that can be disrupted when the unexpected happens.
Innovation is not only about developing new products. It is also about designing health systems that are better able to withstand disruption. That means supporting health products that can remain effective in hotter temperatures and more challenging environments. It means improving access to diagnostics that can be used closer to communities, thereby reducing dependence on centralized infrastructure. It means strengthening regional manufacturing capacity of health products so that countries are less vulnerable to disruptions occurring thousands of kilometers away. It means creating new approaches to oxygen production, procurement and delivery that improve reliability while expanding access. And it means advancing climate-smart health product and technologies that not only reduce the environmental footprint of health systems, thereby helping to mitigate climate change, but also reduce dependence on fossil fuels and associated emissions, making health systems less vulnerable to fossil fuel price volatility, oil shocks and supply chain disruptions driven by geopolitical instability.
At Unitaid, this understanding increasingly shapes how we approach innovation. Across our programs, we are investing not only in better health products, but in solutions that can help health systems continue delivering care in a world increasingly shaped by climate pressures, supply chain disruptions and geopolitical uncertainty.
The goal is simple: innovation should not only help us respond to crises. It should help us prepare for them. The world is unlikely to become more stable in the years ahead. Climate change will continue to test health systems. Geopolitical tensions will continue to create uncertainty. New health threats will continue to emerge.
In this environment, resilience cannot be treated as an afterthought. It must become a design principle. The future of global health will depend not only on developing the next breakthrough medicine, diagnostic or vaccine. It will also depend on building the systems, products and supply chains capable of delivering those innovations when they are needed most.