Your Excellency Emmanuel Macron, President of the Republic of France,
Your Excellency Jean-Yves Le Drian, Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs,
Your Excellency and my friend Olivier Véran, Minister for Solidarity and Health,
Your Excellency Frédérique Vidal, Minister of Higher Education, Research and Innovation,
Your Excellency Louise Mushikiwabo, Secretary General of the International Organization of the Francophonie,
Your Excellency the Right Honourable Patricia Scotland, Secretary General of the Commonwealth,
Mr Grégory Doucet, Mayor of Lyon,
Mr Bruno Bernard, President of the Métropole,
Mr Laurent Wauquiez, President of the Regional Council,
Honourable members of the parliament,
Distinguished guests, dear colleagues and friends,
Bonjour à tous, et merci beaucoup pour votre accueil.
I’m delighted to be in Lyon today for this groundbreaking ceremony for the WHO Academy.
And I would especially like to thank you, Mr President, for your commitment and support for the WHO Academy, but also for WHO and global health more generally.
I have especially appreciated your leadership and support during the COVID-19 pandemic, including the important role you played in the initial discussions for what became the ACT Accelerator.
But the close relationship between France and WHO goes back much further than the pandemic.
Indeed, the WHO Academy is the latest expression of France’s longstanding support for WHO and its historic commitment to advancing global health.
This goes back to 1851, when the first International Sanitary Conference was held in Paris. Later, the first International Office of Public Hygiene – the forerunner of the WHO – was founded in Paris in 1907.
Under President Macron’s leadership, the Government of France has been a driver and principal investor in the WHO Academy and has done much to guide its development.
I would also like to thank the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region, the Lyon Métropole and the City of Lyon for your strong support, investment and hospitality, and for bringing us to this moment – the previous leadership of the Mayor, the Métropole and the region, and the current.
I also express my gratitude to Alain Merieux and Gerard Mestrallet who play a key role in mobilizing the private sector and local partners.
I would also like to use this opportunity to thank Ambassador Michèle Boccoz, who is now the Ambassador of France in Manila, to my friend Dr Jim Campbell, to Tana, to Gaya, and also to Ambassador François Rivasseau, who just finished his term, and Ambassador Jérôme Bonnafort, who took over quickly, so the support from the mission in Geneva was great.
And I would like to recognize the generous support of the Buffett Foundation, which has helped to bring us to this moment.
It’s a moment that has been four years in the making.
Shortly after I became Director-General in 2017, we set about transforming WHO into an organization that was more responsive to the needs of countries, and more effective in meeting those needs.
As we asked our Member States and our own workforce what they needed from WHO, the answer was consistent: training, capacity building.
Countries told us they needed support to build their capacities for emergency preparedness and response, to respond to the dual challenge of communicable and noncommunicable diseases, and to strengthen every facet of their health systems, from information to health financing.
Once capacity building and training was clear as a need for Member States and our own staff, then there was a G20 meeting – if I remember this is in Argentina – and I wanted to talk to His Excellency the President. We met in the corridor and I told him about the idea. He said, “Tedros, this idea is very serious, it’s a big idea. I will give you my mobile, and when I return to Paris I will arrange and we will discuss.” We met in early 2019, in his office. When he gave me his mobile, he said, “Let’s take this seriously, let’s talk in Paris,” I said the language I like: oh là là, this thing is done!
Not only that, after the meeting in Paris, he mobilised the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the city, the Métropole, the region, the private sector – all partners who needed to be involved were involved, because he believed from the start that this needs the contribution of all sectors.
Not only that, but we agreed in our meeting that this should be in Lyon. That’s how it started, from early 2019, and we both call this Academy our daughter.
WHO has long been known for its world-class technical guidance across a huge range of health issues.
But that guidance we give has not always delivered the impact it should in countries.
Too often it sits on a shelf or in an overworked health administrator’s inbox, and isn’t fully implemented – the norms, the guidance that we prepare.
We need to find ways of making sure WHO guidance is applied faster and delivers results faster.
To do that, we must make sure health workers can access learning opportunities that will help them apply the latest WHO guidance, and make a real difference in the lives of the people they serve.
The COVID-19 pandemic is a powerful reminder of how critical health workers are, and why they need investment, decent jobs, and the most up-to-date information, competencies and tools to keep their communities healthy and safe.
Global health challenges are constantly evolving, and so must the way we learn.
Traditional classroom-based, in-person training is valuable, as you know, but is inadequate in its impact, scale and speed to meet global health challenges. The new concept, of course it will have in-person classroom-based training, as Agnès said, 16,000 per year estimate, but through this Academy we will train tens of millions, could be hundreds of millions. We can expand it. Imagine the impact of training millions from here, using AI and advanced technologies.
I will give you an example.
Four years ago, WHO launched OpenWHO.org, an online learning platform for making WHO’s evidence-based learning available to mass audiences globally.
During the pandemic, we have developed 38 courses, offered in 56 languages, with almost 6 million learner enrolments. 70% of enrolments are from low- and middle-income countries.
This OpenWHO.org platform provides powerful proof of concept for the WHO Academy, which we expect to have even greater reach and greater impact.
From its base here in Lyon, the WHO Academy will be a school for the future, and for the whole world.
Our ambition is not modest: it’s to transform lifelong learning for health impact globally.
Using state-of-the-art learning technologies and advancements in learning science, the Academy will expand worldwide access to the highest quality learning.
It will deliver multilingual, personalised learning programmes in digital, in-person and blended formats – anywhere in the world. And it will go beyond the transfer of knowledge, to building the competencies of millions of people, including health workers, managers, educators, ministries of health and the general public.
It will also be a centre of learning and career development for WHO’s own workforce.
But WHO and France will not do this alone. The Academy will work closely with partners not only in Lyon, but around the world. And although it will have its roots in France, as part of WHO, the Academy will belong to the whole world, and we seek the engagement of all nations in making it a success.
We also look forward to establishing regional hubs, using existing health institutions, to extend and expand the Academy’s reach.
The Lyon campus – to be completed in 2023 – will reflect WHO’s values and ambitions: it will be an innovative, accessible, eco-friendly – as Anne said, the designer – collaborative and interactive facility in the heart of Lyon’s bio-medical district.
This futuristic campus will blend smart architecture and the latest innovations in adult learning.
Its high-tech simulation facility, unlike any in the world, will use virtual and augmented reality to prepare learners from around the world for disaster response and other health emergencies, in realistic field conditions.
In future, we hope the Academy will also have a research role, complementing the work of WHO’s International Agency for Research on Cancer, which is also based in Lyon.
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2021 has been designated the Year of the Health and Care Worker, recognizing the invaluable contribution that health and care workers make to our lives and our world.
But that recognition must be more than lip service. We owe it to health and care workers to ensure they have the knowledge, the tools and the competencies to do their jobs to the best of their ability. After all, it’s in our own interests.
That’s what the WHO Academy is all about.
It’s an investment in equity, health, education and technology. But ultimately, it’s an investment in people, and in a healthier, safer, fairer future.
This concept came just a few months before the pandemic. But now it’s even more important given what we have witnessed during the pandemic. The pandemic made it even more important and we have to do it with a sense of urgency.
Merci encore, Monsieur le Président. I still remember the corridor in Argentina, when you have me your mobile. You said this was very serious, and you were right. I remember my own words, “Oh là là.” I was really happy to find a real partner.
And thank you once again also to the city and Métropole of Lyon, the regional council, and to the government and people of France for your hospitality and commitment.
I hope you will take care of the WHO Academy in Lyon. It belongs to you and the whole world. I hope it will be a game-changer.
Merci beaucoup. I thank you.