Watch: Inside WHA74 with the Gates Foundation's Steve Davis

The 74th World Health Assembly was unlike any other. A year into the COVID-19 pandemic, it provided a moment of reckoning and reflection on the World Health Organization’s role and a chance to address some of the major challenges that have emerged. However, for many observers, WHA74 fell short of expectations — making almost no progress on critical issues such as vaccine equity and an international pandemic treaty. “There was no plan to address immediately the vaccine situation … World leaders at the start of the World Health Assembly … all were talking about vaccine inequity but there was no such plan or decision or resolution on that,” said Jenny Lei Ravelo, Devex’s senior global health reporter. Other questions, such as the failure of influential countries to agree on an approach to intellectual property, are ongoing. “We have to rethink some things that we’ve held dear to us over the years, whether it’s the way, you know, certain institutions work, things we’ve assumed about our health care systems,” said Steve Davis, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s senior strategy adviser and interim director for the China country office. Devex’s specialist reporters dug into the key takeaways with Davis and discussed how these issues might play out going forward. Highlights include: • A look at the most significant moments of WHA74 • Where progress was made — and where it wasn’t • Changes to WHO’s funding • Key issues affecting vaccine equity, including COVAX, vaccine sharing, intellectual property, local manufacturing, and distribution capacity for vaccine rollouts • The Gates Foundation’s work on these issues • How to advance digital health Watch the full discussion below, or catch up on our in-depth coverage from WHA74.