WHO’s diagnostics coalition pushes governments to treat diagnosis as core infrastructure
The Global Diagnostics Coalition used the World Health Summit 2026 to press a blunt message: diagnosis is not an optional add-on to care, but the starting point of modern health systems. With leaders from government, civil society, industry and partner organizations in the room, the coalition framed diagnostics as central to universal health coverage, health security and pandemic preparedness.
The scale of the problem is stark. Nearly half of the world’s population — 47% — still lacks access to a timely, reliable diagnosis. In practical terms, that means patients arrive late to treatment, clinicians lose time to uncertainty, and health systems absorb avoidable costs from repeated visits, delayed therapy and complications that could have been interrupted earlier.
Without timely and accurate diagnostics, clinicians are often forced to guess.
Opening the event, WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus argued that resilient systems must be built before a crisis hits, not after hospitals are overwhelmed or outbreaks are already spreading. The logic is straightforward. If laboratories, imaging networks, specimen transport and reporting systems cannot function during routine care, they are unlikely to perform under pressure when the next epidemic, surge in noncommunicable disease or humanitarian shock arrives.
Delayed diagnosis translates into repeated care, worsening illness and missed treatment windows
Carol Nawina of CITAMplus brought the burden into human focus by describing repeated care-seeking before diagnosis of HIV, tuberculosis and cancer. Her account captured what diagnostic failure looks like at the bedside: patients moving through the health system without an answer, accumulating expenses, losing confidence and sometimes deteriorating before treatment can begin.
Her call was not for isolated disease programs, but for diagnostics organized around people and communities. That approach matters because symptoms do not present in disease silos, even when financing often does. A patient with chronic cough, weight loss or unexplained fever needs a system that can move across conditions quickly and connect the result to treatment without forcing another round of referrals and waiting.
Nawina also pressed for communities to be treated as equal partners in designing services, shaping innovation and holding systems accountable. In diagnostics, that means listening to where delays occur, where sample transport breaks down, where travel costs block access and where trust is lost long before the lab result returns. Her message was direct: lived experience is evidence, not anecdote.
Country-led systems, not fragmented projects, sat at the center of the discussion
The event repeatedly returned to a familiar but stubborn problem in global health: too many diagnostic investments remain fragmented, disease-specific and poorly integrated with treatment pathways. Participants argued for national diagnostic priorities that can align partners, financing and implementation around a country’s actual needs rather than around disconnected donor interests.
Dr Mohamed Fawzi of Egypt described the country’s progress in expanding screening, diagnostic imaging and teleradiology. His remarks pointed to a critical principle in diagnostics policy: access only has meaning when a result leads somewhere. Screening without referral capacity, imaging without interpretation, and diagnosis without treatment can all create the appearance of progress while leaving patients stranded.
The discussion also emphasized workforce and infrastructure constraints. Diagnostics depend on trained personnel, dependable power, equipment maintenance, reagent supply chains and reporting systems that can carry results to the point of care. When any one of those pieces fails, the diagnostic pathway slows or stops. In low-resource settings, that failure often happens far upstream of the clinician who finally sees the patient.
Investment decisions depend on evidence, not slogans
An expert panel moderated by Dr Ibrahima Socé Fall brought together voices from the Global Diagnostics Coalition, FIND, Siemens Healthineers, Christian Blind Mission and the Gates Foundation. The panel’s central argument was economic as well as clinical: countries and donors need stronger evidence on the health and economic value of diagnostics if they are going to invest at scale.
That emphasis is important because diagnostics are often treated as cost centers rather than as the infrastructure that determines whether expensive medicines, surgery and public health interventions are used appropriately. A test that identifies tuberculosis earlier, or confirms a malignancy before advanced spread, changes downstream spending and outcomes in ways that are easy to overlook when budgets are built around visible commodities rather than decision-making capacity.
The discussion also pressed for more effective regulatory pathways and for innovation that reflects country needs. In diagnostics, innovation that cannot be deployed, maintained or interpreted locally adds little value. Products designed without attention to infrastructure, training and workflow tend to collect attention in conference halls while failing at the point where patients actually need them.
One year after launch, the coalition is trying to turn alignment into action
Kylie Shae, Team Lead for Medical Devices and Assistive Technology at WHO and chair of the Global Diagnostics Coalition, presented the coalition’s progress one year after launch. She described growing membership and work organized around three pillars: Illuminate, Champion and Integrate. Each reflects a different part of the same problem. The first is visibility — identifying where gaps exist. The second is advocacy — making the case for political and financial commitment. The third is integration — linking diagnostics with broader health systems rather than leaving them as standalone projects.
That framework matters because diagnostic access fails for multiple reasons at once. A country may have a laboratory network but weak distribution. It may have equipment but not maintenance. It may have trained staff but no path from result to treatment. A coalition can only make a difference if it helps governments see those bottlenecks together, then supports realistic sequencing rather than isolated interventions.
Closing the event, Deusdedit Mubangizi of WHO’s Department of Medicines and Health Products Policy and Standards urged stakeholders to turn momentum into shared responsibility. The Berlin meeting marked a visible step in the coalition’s outreach to the wider global health community, but the clinical and policy challenge remains concrete: diagnosis still arrives too late for too many people, and the systems meant to deliver it remain unevenly financed, unevenly organized and too often disconnected from care.
The next test is not whether the gap is recognized. It is whether countries, partners and manufacturers can align around national priorities, workforce capacity and delivery systems that bring diagnosis closer to patients before disease advances beyond easy reach.