Current trends in global health

In January 2015, 31 global influencers, among those several nobel laureates,signed an open letter to all world leaders stating: „There are moments in historythat become turning points. In our view, 2015 will be such a moment. It isthe most important year for global decision-making since the start of the newmillennium.“ They referred to the launching of the new Sustainable DevelopmentGoals in 2015, to the G7 Summit in Germany and the Climate Conferencein Paris, three major events with high impact on global development.Two years later, 2017 also assembled decisive events with respect to developmentand sustainability and with a focus on health: i) The G20 Summitaddressing global health topics, especially the rising threat of antibiotic resistancesand (re-)emerging infectious diseases, climate change and healthand how to contain the three big killers, HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis.ii) Global Health Ministers‘ Conference: For the first time, all world healthministers assembled in Moscow to discuss the problem of tuberculosis controlin times of multidrug resistance and HIV-TB comorbidity. iii) In addition,aspects of global health security were discussed in a civil-military approach,namely at the World Health Summit in Berlin. iv) As most of the emerginginfectious diseases are zoonoses, the vision of „one health“ was treated inseveral scientific meetings in 2017.In our view, also 2017 was a very important year for global decision making –with respect to global health! Agreements and declarations adopted in 2017will have sustainable impact on how we deal with global health problems inthe following years. Thus, we assembled to most important topics, argumentsand documents in this book to serve as a basis for following activities in maintaining,furthering and improving global health.