WHO chief hopes for ‘historic’ pandemic accord

A brand contemporary pandemic accord below negotiation ought to be a “historic agreement” marking a dramatic shift in the technique to global health security after the COVID crisis, the WHO chief acknowledged Sunday.

“We’re going to no longer simply lift on as we did earlier than,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus acknowledged as he opened the World Successfully being Group’s annual assembly in Geneva.

WHO’s member states indulge in begun negotiations in direction of a global agreement aimed to make sure the sector is extra healthy equipped to forestall or extra successfully acknowledge the next time a pandemic hits.

The technique is peaceful in the early phases, nevertheless the purpose is for agreement to be reached in time for the next World Successfully being Assembly, in Could maybe moreover 2024.

“The pandemic accord that member states are in level of truth negotiating ought to be a historic agreement to catch a paradigm shift in global health security, recognizing that our fates are interwoven,” Tedros acknowledged first and predominant of the 10-day gathering.

That was also the message from an extended line of various excessive-stage speakers Sunday.

“I’m hoping the sleek negotiations on pandemic prevention, preparedness and response result in a trusty multilateral plan that saves lives,” UN chief Antonio Guterres acknowledged, talking by strategy of video message.

Timor-Leste President Jose Manuel Ramos-Horta in the meantime pointed out that “every nation, gargantuan or runt, rich or downhearted, struggled to mount an ample response to the pandemic”.

“This reminds us that we need to always indulge in our home earlier than the storm, now no longer throughout the storm.”

‘Be aware the darkness’

The pandemic has wreaked global devastation and formally killed nearly seven million of us, with the correct figure believed to be closer to twenty million.

Tedros earlier this month declared that the COVID crisis now now no longer constitutes a global health emergency.

Nevertheless he pressured out Sunday that “COVID-19 is peaceful with us, it peaceful kills, or now no longer it is peaceful altering and it peaceful requires our consideration”.

We could maybe maybe also simply indulge in emerged from “an extended, black tunnel”, he acknowledged, “nevertheless here is the moment to discover at the support of us and consider the darkness of the tunnel, after which … switch forward in the sunshine of the a mighty quantity of painful lessons it has taught us”.

“Chief among those lessons is that we will most productive face shared threats with a shared response.”

If agreed, the pandemic accord will imprint most productive the second legally-binding health treaty since WHO was created 75 years ago.

Tedros highlighted the success of the first one—the Framework Conference on Tobacco Regulate adopted precisely 20 years ago.

Over that time, he pointed out, smoking incidence has dropped by one third globally.

“The WHO FCTC is living proof of the energy of global agreements to power a paradigm shift in global health,” he acknowledged, voicing hope an endemic accord could slay the same.

“Here’s the moment for us to jot down a brand contemporary chapter in global health historic previous, together.”

© 2023 AFP