World Health Summit 2026 (Berlin): Gates Foundation and Wellcome Leap Commit $100M to "Uzima" Stillbirth Initiative; Bangladesh Puts €250M Into Women's Health; Wellcome Global Monitor Shows Trust in Science Falling

World Health Summit 2026 (Berlin): Gates Foundation and Wellcome Leap Commit $100M to "Uzima" Stillbirth Initiative; Bangladesh Puts €250M Into Women's Health; Wellcome Global Monitor Shows Trust in Science Falling

October 11–13, 2026. The World Health Summit convened in Berlin under the theme "From Crisis to Resilience: Innovating for Health" — 4,000+ on-site participants, 400+ speakers, 75+ sessions — and its press conferences produced three concrete announcements relevant to global health policy:

1. Uzima — a $100M stillbirth-prevention initiative. Announced Monday evening (Oct 12) at the WHS Signature Event: Wellcome Leap and the Gates Foundation will commit $100 million to Uzima, "a new stillbirth prevention initiative that aims to show stillbirth rates can be cut in half within a decade across selected countries." Each funder contributes $50M during the program's first three years, beginning with partners in sub-Saharan Africa, funding "tools that help families and health workers recognize risks earlier and respond to complications during pregnancy and childbirth, from AI-enabled ultrasound to sensors and technologies used during labor." The scale framing: "Nearly 2 million babies are stillborn every year worldwide, one every 17 seconds, and almost half of these losses occur in sub-Saharan Africa." Gates Foundation Gender Equality Division president Anita Zaidi: "We're working toward a future where no mother, baby, or child dies from a preventable cause. That's why we're supporting Uzima: to give health workers better tools to recognize risks in pregnancy and act in time, so more families can welcome healthy babies into the world."

2. Bangladesh's €250M women's-health investment. At the opening press conference, UNFPA Executive Director Diene Keita highlighted the Government of Bangladesh's "landmark investment of €250 million in women's health," supported by the European Investment Bank: "We need to shift the way we view women's health: from cost to investment, from a niche sector to a national economic priority."

3. Wellcome Global Monitor 2026 — trust in science has fallen since COVID. Wellcome CEO John-Arne Røttingen launched the Global Monitor at the summit — "the world's largest survey of public attitudes towards science with more than 140,000 respondents in 140 countries — shows us we can't take that trust for granted¹. Trust must be earned through openness, transparency and a willingness to understand and respond to the reality of people's lives for the benefits of science to be realized." Gallup also presented its State of the World's Emotional Health 2026 report on social media and wellbeing.

Why it matters: the trust findings land in the same week the U.S. vaccine-policy fight runs through the courts (Kennedy's Vaccine Overhaul on Trial: First Circuit Weighs the ACIP Freeze While a 16-State Coalition Sues to Restore the Childhood Schedule) and the measles counting dispute (Measles: CDC Sends a "Disease Detective" and Nearly $4M to Pennsylvania — and Has Quietly Shifted Death Counting to NCHS Mortality Data) — and two days before WHO launched its own trust-building movement, WHO Launches "Together for Science and Health" — a Global Trust-in-Science Movement With an Official Launch Set for November 10, 2026. Global health's institutional layer is now visibly organizing around eroding public confidence in science as a first-order problem.