COVID-19 Update
"One Thing Is Abundantly Clear. The World Must Never Be the Same." -- WHO Director-General
World Health Assembly, May 18, 2020.
On
May 18 and 19, the World Health Assembly (WHA),
the decision-making
body
of the World Health Organization (WHO), was held
virtually. At the
meeting, a draft resolution titled "COVID-19
Response" was tabled,
calling for an "impartial" and
"independent" review of the WHO's actions
regarding the pandemic.
It was sponsored by 62 countries, including
Canada, but notably
not the United States. In his opening remarks to
the Assembly,
WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom
Ghebreyesus spoke to the
resolution proposed, saying, amongst other things:
"Every country and every organization must
examine its
response and learn from its experience.
"WHO is committed to transparency, accountability
and
continuous improvement. For us, change is a
constant.
"In fact, the existing independent accountability
mechanisms
are already in operation, since the pandemic
started.
"The Independent Oversight Advisory Committee has
today
published its first report on the pandemic, with
several
recommendations for both the Secretariat and
Member States.
"In that spirit, we welcome the proposed
resolution before
this Assembly, which calls for a step-wise process
of impartial,
independent and comprehensive evaluation.
"To be truly comprehensive, such an evaluation
must encompass
the entirety of the response by all actors, in
good faith.
"So, I will initiate an independent evaluation at
the earliest
appropriate moment to review experience gained and
lessons
learned, and to make recommendations to improve
national and
global pandemic preparedness and response.
"But one thing is abundantly clear. The world
must never be
the same.
"We do not need a review to tell us that we must
all do
everything in our power to ensure this never
happens again.
"Whatever lessons there are to learn from this
pandemic, the
greatest failing would be to not learn from them,
and to leave
the world in the same vulnerable state it was
before.
"If there is anything positive to come from this
pandemic, it
must be a safer and more resilient world.
"This is not a new message.
"Reviews after SARS, the H1N1 pandemic and the
West African
Ebola epidemic highlighted shortcomings in global
health
security, and made numerous recommendations for
countries to
address those gaps.
"Some were implemented; others went unheeded.
"The SARS outbreak gave rise to the revision of
the
International Health Regulations, in 2005;
"The H1N1 pandemic saw the creation of the
Pandemic Influenza
Preparedness Framework; and
"The Ebola outbreak of 2014 and 15 led
to the establishment of the Pandemic Emergency
Financing
Facility, the WHO Emergencies Programme and the
Independent
Oversight Advisory Committee.
"The world doesn't need another plan, another
system, another
mechanism, another committee or another
organization.
"It needs to strengthen, implement and finance
the systems and
organizations it has -- including WHO. Many
leaders who have
spoken today have raised these issues:
implementing, supporting
WHO, and financing.
"The world can no longer afford the short-term
amnesia that
has characterized its response to health security
for too
long.
"The time has come to weave together the
disparate strands of
global health security into an unbreakable chain
-- a
comprehensive framework for epidemic and pandemic
preparedness.
"The world does not lack the tools, the science,
or the
resources to make it safer from pandemics. What is
has lacked is
the sustained commitment to use the tools, the
science and the
resources it has.
"That must change, and it must change today.
"Today I am calling on all nations to resolve
that they will
do everything it takes to ensure that the 2020
coronavirus
pandemic is never repeated.
"I am calling on all nations to invest in
strengthening and
implementing the many tools at our disposal --
especially the
global treaty that underpins global health
security: the
International Health Regulations.
"To be successful, we must all commit to mutual
ownership and
accountability.
"One way to do that, proposed by the Africa Group
last year,
is through a system of universal periodic review,
in which
countries agree to a regular and transparent
review of each
nation's preparedness."
This article was published in
Volume 50 Number 18 - May 23, 2020
Article Link:
COVID-19 Update: "One Thing Is Abundantly Clear. The World Must Never Be the Same." -- WHO Director-General
Website: www.cpcml.ca
Email: editor@cpcml.ca
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