Dear colleagues,
Good morning to all of you, and thank you for agreeing to be part of this Standing Committee for Health Emergency and Response.
My special thanks to Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah of Malaysia and Professor Jérôme Salomon of France for agreeing to serve as the committee’s first Chair and Vice-Chair.
And my thanks to all of you for volunteering your time and expertise to serve on this new and important body.
As you all know, the COVID-19 has revealed serious gaps in the world’s defences against epidemics, pandemics and other health emergencies.
And we know that, unfortunately, this will not be the last pandemic, nor the large-scale health emergency.
With urbanization, habitat destruction, intensive agriculture and climate change, these risks are converging with unprecedented frequency and intensity.
We owe it to those we have lost, and those who will come after us, to learn the lessons from this pandemic and make the changes that must be made to keep the world safer.
And indeed, many of those lessons are being learned and changes are being made.
The international accord that Member States are now negotiating will provide a much-needed framework for enhancing a shared response to shared threats;
Targeted amendments to the International Health Regulations will help to sharpen this fundamental tool of global health security;
The newly-established Pandemic Fund will help to provide catalytic and gap-filling financing for the countries that need it most;
The Universal Health and Preparedness Review, which is now being piloted, will help to enhance mutual accountability, and mutual trust;
The WHO Hub for Pandemic and Epidemic Intelligence will help to build our collective capacities to predict, detect, assess and respond to health emergencies.
Work is also underway to enhance the global health emergency workforce; to build a new platform to increase equitable access to medical products; and to build resilient and scalable clinical care systems that are ready to surge if needed.
This Standing Committee is another part – and a crucial part – of the new architecture for health emergency preparedness and response that is now being constructed.
Enhanced governance and coordination are essential if the world is to put a stop to the cycle of panic and neglect that has characterised the response to health emergencies in recent decades.
Instead of chaos and confusion, we need cooperation and collaboration.
It’s especially important that this committee is anchored in the Executive Board, and in WHO’s unique constitutional mandate.
New governance mechanisms outside WHO have the potential to weaken WHO at precisely the time when it needs to be reinforced and empowered to play its coordinating role in global health.
Once again, thank you for your commitment to making the world healthier, safer, and fairer.
I look forward to your advice, and to working with you all in the months and years ahead.
With that, let’s get to work.