Annual Report 2020 of the MMI Network

Dear Network members and partners,

2020 is a year that we will never forget. A microscopic virus affected our lives and gave us some lessons we must not forget. And we are still learning these lessons. And they hurt.

SARS Cov2 has shown that in a globalizied world, we cannot compartmentalize health problems, believing that what is happening in other world regions is none of our business. And we are not really prepared to have a global answer for a global problem, not in terms of global health security, and not at all in terms of global solidarity. And this pandemic has also shown the narrow relationship between health and other sectors as social protection, ecology and economy.

The reaction to this pandemic needs a reflection, too. Despite being a global problem, countries have provided individual solutions, competing for scarce protective material, and subsequently promoting unequal access to vaccines, and exceeding in some countries the balance between health security and human rights. Meanwhile, the global health governance was conditioned by geopolitical fights and has shown its weakness of joint and coordinated action and regulation. And even if they aren’t in the media, the rest of health problems and the rampant inequity in access to healthcare are still there.

In this context of fragmentation, conveners and networkers such as the MMI Network are more needed than ever.

But 2020 was also a difficult year for us, as we never could come together physically to advance our work, to share and learn from each other. In this setup, and matching initial plans with the realities of a dramatically and dynamically changing environment, we developed and approved a new MMI Network Strategy 2021-2025, in a process that took most of the efforts of the MMI Board in 2020 and made us learn how to effectively work, as a team, and involving members, in a Zoom meeting room and using online working documents.

In the MMI Network Strategy 2021-25 we outline our direction for the next years based on our renewed mission to initiate, promote and amplify actions to achieve Health for All. We intend to contribute to transforming policies and practice of global health and international health cooperation throug a set of interrelated strategic objectives. These include our traditional role of creating and convening civic spaces for exchange and policy advancement in global health, but add the creation of own thematic communities and platforms for dealing with some of the most important problems that international health cooperation is going to face in next years, such as the use of data and the promotion of digital technologies, the role of international health cooperation related to climate and health injustice, and the balance between health security and universal access priorities.

After the lessons learned in last year, we long for a new normality, also in global health and international health cooperation. But this new normality must be a different one: more equal, more sustainable, more participative. The MMI Network and its members will contribute to make this happen.

Finally, I want to express my thanks to all MMI members. With your voice and efforts, you helped us to bring our work forward, but more importantly, you contributed to alleviating the effects of the ongoing pandemic and to showing that other world is possible.

Carlos Mediano, President
Medicus Mundi International Network