3 December 2013: The medical journal ‘The Lancet’ has released a report describing an investment framework to achieve dramatic health gains by 2035, accompanied by messages from UN and World Bank leaders. A Lancet Commission on Investing in Health produced the report on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the World Bank’s 1993 World Development Report, the last in that series to focus on health.

‘Global health 2035: A world converging within a generation’ highlights the value of: health investments to produce a large payoff in economic growth and well-being; investments in low and middle-income countries to bring life expectancy and health to the level of wealthier countries; fiscal policies to curb non-communicable diseases (NCDs) and injuries; and “progressive universalism” as a pathway to universal health coverage.

World Bank President Jim Yong Kim, World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Margaret Chan, UN Development Programme (UNDP) Administrator Helen Clark, Executive Director of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria Mark Dybul, and Sweden’s Minister for International Development Hillevi Engström provided commentaries accompanying the report.

In their own commentary, Lancet editors Richard Horton and Selina Lo argue that sustainable development means taking the health of future generations as seriously as we take our own, and rethinking high-consumption economic models. They present a concept of planetary health, which in addition to human health includes the health of the physical planetary systems necessary for human life, and the health of human civilizations.

Engström’s commentary notes that development partners have forged a strong case for health and its links to sustainable development in the post-2015 agenda, and that country-owned national health plans should form the basis for investment. [Publication: Global health 2035: A world converging within a generation] [Report Website]