WHO lauds World Leaders over commitment to end Impact of COVID-19
By Princess-Ekwi Ajide, Abuja
The World Health Organization, WHO, has appreciated what it termed “historic” commitment shown by world leaders at the United Nations General Assembly, to strengthen the international cooperation, coordination, governance and investment needed to prevent a repeat of the devastating health and socioeconomic impact caused by COVID-19.
The commitment is also expected to make the world better prepared for future pandemics, and get back on track to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals.
The political declaration, approved by Mr Dennis Francis, President of the 78th United Nations General Assembly, and the result of negotiations under the leadership of Ambassadors Gilad Erdan of Israel and Omar Hilale of Morocco, underscored the pivotal role played by WHO as the directing and coordinating authority on international health, and the need to commit further to sustainable financing that provides adequate and predictable funding to the World Health Organization, which enables it to have the resources needed to fulfil its core functions.
The declaration among other numerous measures required, recognizes the need for Member States to conclude negotiations on the Pandemic Accord and continue their work to make targeted amendments to the International Health Regulations (2005) by May 2024, ensure the sustainable, affordable, fair, equitable, effective, efficient and timely access to medical countermeasures, including vaccines, diagnostics, therapeutics and other health products; take measures to counter and address the negative impacts of health-related misinformation, disinformation, hate speech and stigmatization, especially on social media platforms, on people’s physical and mental health, scale up health system capacities to address pandemic threats in low- and lower-middle income countries, especially across Africa among others.
According to WHO’s Director-General, Dr Tedros Ghebreyesus, the first-ever head of state summit on pandemic prevention, preparedness and response is a historic milestone in the urgent drive to make all people of the world safer, and better protected from the devastating impacts of pandemics.
He said the lived experience of people who suffered through the COVID-19 pandemic must be at the forefront going forward in order to realize the clear direction provided by world leaders.
Dr Ghebreyesus noted we must learn how to protect our communities better and to engage, inform and empower them to be part of the solution.
“We need to build stronger clinical care systems that can save lives as doing so requires concrete actions to ensure equitable access to medical countermeasures, sustainable and adequate financing, empowered and engaged communities and robust, trained and equipped health workers, ” He said.
He also emphasised that the devastating impacts of COVID-19 demonstrated why the world needs a more collaborative, cohesive and equitable approach to preventing, preparing for and responding to pandemics.
The WHO Boss noted that governments and multilateral partners have already commenced building the foundations for a safer world, with the establishment of the Pandemic Fund, the WHO Hub for Pandemic and Epidemic Intelligence, the WHO BioHub to voluntarily share novel biological materials, and the mRNA vaccine technology transfer hub and added that the political declaration approved yesterday calls for further strengthening of the global health emergency architecture to better protect the world from the repeat of COVID-19.
