Ambassador Gatilov,
Ambassador Braithwaite,
Ambassador Bremberg,
Excellencies, distinguished guests, dear colleagues and friends,
It is such an honour to be here with you today to commemorate the 40th anniversary of smallpox eradication.
I remember walking through the streets of Asmara with my mother as a small boy, and seeing posters about smallpox in the street in the early 1970s. That is also the first time I encountered WHO. In our language we call it Ye alem t'ena dirigit
Now, when I leave the office every evening, and when I come in, I see the smallpox memorial statue, and I remember the street in Asmara where I used to walk with my mother and have fresh memories of the smallpox eradication effort.
Today, with this plaque, we recognize the day – 9 December 1979 – when smallpox was confirmed to have been eradicated.
Five months later, the 33rd World Health Assembly officially declared that “the world and its peoples have won freedom from smallpox.”
Today, smallpox is the only human disease ever eradicated, a testimony to what we can achieve when all nations work together.
When it comes to epidemic disease, we have a shared responsibility and a shared destiny.
With this plaque, we commemorate the heroes around the world who came together to fight smallpox and worked to keep future generations safe until it was wiped out.
As you know, smallpox has plagued humanity for thousands of years, killing 300 million people in the 20th century alone.
The smallpox eradication programme taught us many lessons, which we still use today.
Our experience with smallpox informs the strategies and tools we now use to fight polio and Ebola, such as disease surveillance, health promotion, and ring vaccination.
We use the lessons learned from smallpox when we take on emerging epidemic diseases such as Zika, MERS, and now monkeypox.
Smallpox also laid the foundation for national childhood immunization programmes worldwide, which are critical to primary health care and the movement for universal health coverage.
At the same time, smallpox preparedness remains at the heart of global health security initiatives to protect people everywhere.
Yet today, we are facing a lack of trust in public institutions, widespread vaccine hesitancy and disinformation - as Ambassador Braithwaite said, and glaring gaps in our immunization coverage for the most vulnerable.
The result has been catastrophic. Globally, measles killed 140 thousand people last year, many of them infants and young children.
The fact that any child is afflicted by a vaccine-preventable disease such as measles is an outrage.
Yet less than 70 percent of children worldwide are getting the second dose of measles vaccine, when it should be 95 percent.
Globally, there are more than 13 million children, many of them in fragile states and conflict-affected countries, who are entirely left out of vaccination services.
We are not protecting the world’s most vulnerable children. This is a collective failure.
The success of smallpox eradication shows us what is possible, and has allowed us to dream of another major public health achievement – the eradication of polio.
We have brought polio to the brink of eradication, but we are not there yet.
We must continue with even greater commitment and determination until polio is eradicated. As you know, the last mile is the hardest mile.
And let us remember – the smallpox vaccine was invented in 1796 by the English physician Dr Edward Jenner.
Dr. Jenner predicted that ‘the annihilation of the smallpox’ – the most dreadful scourge of humanity - must be the ‘final result’ of the vaccine. So he predicted it. And in fact, it took nearly 200 years.
The three countries here with us today had a big role. As Ambassador Gatilov said, the USSR proposed the eradication, and Dr Henderson of the USA led the effort.
Thank you to all who participated in ending smallpox.
The lesson from smallpox is very clear – technology is not enough. The best vaccines in the world do not help us if people are not getting them.
As Ambassador Gatilov said, this achievement was done in the middle of the Cold War. So anything is possible and we cannot have any excuse with polio or other diseases.
We must invest in immunization programmes, public health communication, and strong primary care. But above all, we had global solidarity, which was really visible, and which we should celebrate, a solidarity even with our differences.
That is the only way we can achieve health for all, protect people from these devastating outbreaks and make the world a safer place.
Finally I am really proud to join you, and hope that this will inspire us to do more for the people we serve. Thank you so much.