G7 Health Ministers’ Meeting, communique, Oxford, 4 June, 2021

We, the G7 Health Ministers met in Oxford, UK, and virtually, on 3 and 4 June 2021, to reaffirm the importance of international collaboration on health, in the context of a significant global crisis.

We are meeting amid the COVID-19 pandemic, which continues to have a devastating impact on lives, livelihoods and economies across the world. We remember the lives that have been lost to the pandemic, both directly and through broader impacts on health, health service provision and inequalities. We recognise that the pandemic has left no one untouched: that it has impacted not only physical health but also mental health and social wellbeing; that people young and old have been kept apart and that economic damage has been widespread. The impact of the pandemic has been a gendered one and has disproportionately affected many different populations experiencing marginalisation and vulnerability within and among countries, in addition to women and girls.