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Conversation highlights:
- Fiocruz is undergoing legal structure reforms to tackle contemporary health challenges with institutional unity and government support.
- The institution leads the Executive Secretariat of the Global Coalition for Local Production and Access, positioning Brazil at the forefront of international health policy.
- Health has become a strategic mission in Brazil's national industrial development strategy, integrating public health needs with economic growth.
- Strategic partnerships with the private sector are a strategic component to advance Fiocruz's capabilities in diagnostics and advanced therapies.
- Brazil's biodiversity represents an untapped frontier for new therapeutics, requiring careful collaboration with indigenous communities.
- Digitalization of Brazil's unified health system data presents opportunities to create value-added health solutions rather than exporting raw data as commodities.
EF: As Fiocruz moves from planning to execution toward 2030, what are your current strategic priorities?
MN: Both the new legal structure and internationalization remain at the height of our attention. The legal structure question was the focal point of a broad institutional and democratic debate last year. We created a big consensus on the need to adapt Fiocruz's legal structure to tackle contemporary challenges. It's not possible to keep doing the work Fiocruz has to do with the standard legal structure we've had for several decades. This is moving forward very fast, and we expect practical effects in the short term. And these are aligned with a broad strategic perspective by the Ministry of Health itself.
Regarding internationalization, the world is different for us post-pandemic. It's paradoxical because people forgot about the pandemic too fast, yet Brazil and Fiocruz were demanded to fill a gap in international relations and global health as an institution able to perform research, formation, production, public policy formulation, and other fields. This has pushed the internationalization agenda forward very fast. We have a new vice president for Global Health and International Cooperation. Brazil has led an initiative in the context of its G20 presidency called the Global Coalition for Local and Regional Production, Innovation and Equitable Access, which was formalized at the World Health Assembly in Geneva last year, and the Brazilian minister of health holds the presidency of its steering committee for its first two years, with Fiocruz was in charge of the Executive Secretariat and is an important aspect of our internationalization among others like the stablishment of offices abroad such as in Africa and Portugal, with focus on expanding access in the global south and integrating better into global science and technology and innovation networks.
EF: What aspect of your current work excites you most?
MN: The coalition is taking so much of our time right now. The advisory committee includes WHO, with Jeremy Farrar as chair, a first-rate reference in global health. We've gathered the most important global health institutions together in this initiative, so it's been very challenging and honorable to be part of this.
From a local perspective, CIBS is also a wonderful project, as it is to become the largest vaccine and biopharmaceutical production center in Latin America, and now we're able to overcome several barriers that were preventing us from advancing. Its model was adapted, becoming a public-private partnership now followed closely by Casa Civil, the ministry closest to the president's cabinet, and the Ministry of Health itself. It became a strategic project in the federal government's view. This aligns with the fact that health was brought into Brazil's national strategy for industrial development as one of its missions. This has never happened before in such a concrete way. You have food security, transportation, housing, and health as strategies that guide the country's industrial development. The health strategy is completely based on the health economic industrial complex approach that was conceived inside Fiocruz, later implemented by the Ministry of Health, and now adopted by the federal government.
EF: Can you share some strategic partnerships that will be particularly relevant for production and innovation?
MN: At the core of all these efforts is the commitment to guarantee access to health: public health needs are what guide our industrial policy. In this context, it would not be fair to single out individual partnerships, since Fiocruz has built, over time, a broad and strategic trajectory of cooperation with private corporations in different areas of health production and innovation. This was also very much aligned with the Ministry of Health’s Productive Development Partnerships, in which Fiocruz has played a leading role. These instruments allowed for building national capabilities, promoting technology transfer, reducing vulnerabilities, and aligning production with the needs of the SUS. These partnerships were also decisive in renewing Fiocruz’s own productive profile, expanding its capacities, and repositioning the institution in strategic areas. Our past and present collaborations with private-sector partners must be understood in that broader perspective, and they will remain essential as we move forward in vaccines, diagnostics, advanced therapies, and other key health technologies.
EF: Looking ahead to 2030, what would you like to help develop for Fiocruz?
MN: There are big frontiers in digitalization and biodiversity that Fiocruz has to address. Regarding digitalization, we have a strategy to take advantage of the huge amounts of data that the unified health system provides. We understand Fiocruz has to play a role because otherwise there's a risk that health data becomes another commodity, we'd keep exporting raw materials and importing processed goods. We want to have a value chain, always oriented to public health needs, that stems from the huge amount of data Brazil provides. All the major companies in the world have activities going in this direction. In terms of biodiversity, Brazil is one of the most biodiverse countries in the world. We have huge research and development efforts in this area, but the potential of what Brazil can provide in terms of new therapeutics isn't being fully realized. Fiocruz, as a national institution oriented to public interest with presence in all Brazil's biomes and close contact with people in these territories, has a role in translating biodiversity into benefit sharing with these communities. We need to map active ingredients present in this biodiversity and make them available to the public without creating more inequality for the people in these territories from which the biodiversity comes.
