“We just can’t go on like before. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director General of the World Health Organization (WHO), set the tone at the opening of the 76th World Health Assembly, which is being held in Geneva from this Sunday, May 21. This meeting, bringing together delegates from WHO Member States, is expected to lead to a “historic agreement” on pandemics, marking a sea change in the field of global health after the Covid-19 crisis.
The discussions, which will be held until Tuesday, May 30, should lead to the conclusion of an international agreement allowing the world to be better equipped to prevent a future pandemic and to react to it in a more effective manner. The process is still in its early stages, but the goal is to secure an agreement for the next World Health Assembly in May 2024.
“The Pandemic Agreement that Member States are negotiating must be a landmark agreement to bring about a paradigm shift in global health recognizing that our destinies are intertwined,” said Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. “I hope that the ongoing negotiations on pandemic prevention, preparedness and response will result in a strong multilateral approach that will save lives,” said Antonio Guterres, Secretary General of the UN.
Jose Manuel Ramos-Horta, the President of East Timor, for his part, stressed that “every country, big or small, rich or poor, has struggled to implement an appropriate response to the pandemic”.
In May, the Director General of the WHO declared that Covid was no longer a global health emergency. But “Covid-19 is still with us, it still kills, it still changes and still demands our attention,” he said on Sunday. In total, the pandemic has killed 7 million people worldwide, according to official figures, but the real toll must be closer to 20 million, according to WHO estimates.
The world has emerged from a “long dark tunnel”, the WHO chief stressed. “Now is the time to remember the darkness of the tunnel and…forge ahead in light of the many painful lessons it has taught us.”
If successful, the pandemic agreement would be the second binding health treaty since the founding of the WHO 75 years ago. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus recalled the success of the previous agreement, the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC), adopted 20 years ago. Since then, smoking has fallen by a third worldwide, he said.
