Engineering a revolution in Global Health

On 7 April, the World Health Organization celebrated its 77th anniversary. The occasion was marked as part of World Health Day, which draws attention to a different global health priority each year. In 2025, the focus is on improving maternal and newborn health with the Healthy beginnings, hopeful futures campaign.¹ Despite recent attention and progress, driven by the United Nation's Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the global situation is stark, highlighting huge disparities in outcomes worldwide. For example, every two minutes a woman dies during pregnancy or childbirth and about 70% of these occur in sub-Saharan Africa.²

This dire situation is echoed across other areas of healthcare, from access to surgery and vaccines to delivery of essential respiratory care. In this article, we argue that the biomedical engineering community is key to helping address these inequities in global healthcare, and furthermore that the response must be international, with representation from each country, for any response to be truly effective and sustainable. In particular, we focus on the African continent, which while facing a disproportionate health burden, is also showing how local expertise in medical engineering and medical technology innovation is a vital and necessary solution.

The WHO recognises that medical (and biomedical) engineers are essential in developing, supporting, assessing3 and regulating medical devices and technology.⁴ Accordingly, a core WHO strategic priority is to "ensure improved access, quality and use of medical products and technologies."⁵ This aligns with the UN health SDGs to delivering a sustainable, cost-effective, and self-sufficient healthcare system across the globe to improve individual and population health. The WHO also highlight the importance of supporting regional capacity in biomedical engineering6 through education, training and certification, supported and overseen by Professional Associations.