Published on 7 April 2025

Health and food

Health and food security are priorities of both Switzerland’s Foreign Policy Strategy 2024-2027 and the International Cooperation Strategy 2025-2028. Switzerland makes use of thematic competences – within the SDC, Swiss academic institutions, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and the private sector – as well as international Geneva, which hosts key global stakeholders in these topic areas, to advance a One Health approach and create healthy living environments and food systems.

Women waiting to weigh their babies at Hombolo Health Center, Tanzania. — © SDC

Thematic context

The repercussions of COVID-19, combined with the climate emergency, ongoing wars and protracted conflicts, have direct consequences on the global health and food systems. More than half of the world’s population does not have access to essential health services, one-third cannot afford a healthy diet, and one person in ten experiences hunger every day. Lack of food, unsafe food and unhealthy diets account for almost a third of the global burden of disease.

Health outcomes are predicted to worsen as access to essential health services is expected to decline. Meanwhile, food systems are driven by a growing competition for natural resources, unsustainable agricultural practices and unhealthy consumption patterns that drive climate change and biodiversity loss.

To address these challenges, the SDC is committed to strengthening global health and food systems by adopting a One Health approach addressing the linkages between human, animal, environmental, and plant health.

Swiss expertise

Switzerland contributes an added value to global health and food systems in three areas:

• Thanks to its thematic competences on health and food, the SDC engages in policy dialogue to create favourable global normative frameworks for health and food systems.
• The thematic section mobilises Swiss-based stakeholders – renowned academic institutions, international NGOs and private sector – and Swiss knowhow, expertise, products, services and approaches.
• International Geneva, as a host to key global stakeholders in health, humanitarian intervention, human rights and trade, gives Switzerland a privileged access to the international community and a unique position to foster complementarity, collaboration and synergies between these stakeholders.

Priorities

The SDC strengthens the link between health and food systems to reduce poverty, prevent and respond to future pandemics, and combat food insecurity, malnutrition and unhealthy diets.

In the short term, the SDC provides thematic support in humanitarian crises by advising the Swiss Humanitarian Aid expert groups working on long-term localised solutions. In the long term, it addresses the structural causes of ill health, hunger and malnutrition in policy dialogues and multi-country programmes with a particularly strong focus on agroecology and the determinants of health. To promote the creation of healthy living environments and resilient food systems, the SDC finances public innovation and applied research, engages in public-private blended financing and encourages a participatory and inclusive governance by supporting global civil society networks and international NGOs.

The work on Health and Food is part of a unique set-up to work at the health-food interface:

At the bilateral level, health is a priority in many partner countries, with various bilateral programmes in Africa and Eastern Europe introducing a One Health approach. Many partner countries engage in agriculture and food system programmes by supporting youth employment in agriculture, improving smallholder farmers’ livelihoods through diversified production or fostering sustainable value chains.

At the multilateral level, the SDC seeks to influence and establish generally accepted standards and international normative frameworks to achieve more equitable access to resources for farmers (land, seeds, water) or access to primary health care. Such international policy dialogues on global health and food system transformation as well as farmers’ rights are driven in collaboration with the Swiss Missions in Geneva, in Rome and in New York, with international financial institutions, and with other federal offices.

Links

• Swiss Health Foreign Policy 2019-2028
• Health – SDC Thematic Network
• Agriculture and Food Systems – SDC Thematic Network

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