Sovereignty is measured in milligrams.
Who makes the medicine, who holds the data, who sets the rules. These look like technical questions. They decide how much sovereignty a country actually has.
How medicine became geopolitics.
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Speaking
Health security has moved out of health ministries. It is now decided in trade policy, industrial strategy and foreign affairs — and most organisations are still discussing it as a procurement problem.
I speak to boards, ministries and international convenings about what that shift means in practice, and where the room for manoeuvre still is.
- KeynoteThe molecule and the map
- KeynoteWho owns the genome of a nation
- PanelEurope, the Gulf and the speed of institutions
- BriefingHealth sovereignty for boards
The Health Order
In March 2020 a single notification from the Indian Directorate General of Foreign Trade restricted the export of paracetamol, and Europe discovered it had no way to make its own.
We called it a supply chain problem. It was a sovereignty problem, and it had been building for thirty years.