Your Excellency Minister Professor Doctor Karl Lauterbach,
Dr. Chris Elias,
Excellencies, dear colleagues and friends,
The frequency and intensity of health emergencies is growing, with evolving pathogen threats increasing due to population growth, environmental degradation, and many other pressures.
Even as the risks increase, the gaps and vulnerabilities in the world's emergency response capabilities were cruelly exposed by the COVID-19 pandemic.
COVID-19 will not be our last major health emergency. Disease outbreaks are a fact of life. We must be prepared.
The key to success in health emergency response is to investigate, confirm, and assess public health events as rapidly and as close to their source as possible.
If a threat is found, the next step is to initiate immediate measures to protect communities, provide safe and life-saving clinical care, and sound the alarm about the risk of further spread.
Acting quickly and decisively offers the best opportunity to interrupt transmission, contain spread, save lives and warn the world.
Our greatest single asset in health emergency response is our workforce.
Rethinking our health emergency workforce capacities at every level is critical to preparing for and responding to health emergencies.
Surge support teams play a critical role in disease outbreak response, providing capabilities for investigation, diagnostics, risk assessment, containment, community engagement and clinical care for those affected.
Much time is lost when responses are ad hoc, disconnected, and don’t receive surge support early enough.
No single country has all the capabilities to respond to all health threats alone.
Rapid and coordinated national alert and response mechanisms are vital. There is no global health security without local and national health security.
That is why we need to find ways to collaborate more coherently and rapidly across countries and regions, to connect local and national health teams and health leaders to regional and global expertise in a timely manner.
We already have some good models, represented by the key networks here today, with their proven track records of responding to some of the world's most difficult and dangerous disease outbreaks and other emergencies.
With over 270 partner institutions, the Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network, known as GOARN, is the largest multidisciplinary network dedicated to outbreak preparedness and response globally.
The Emergency Medical Teams, or EMT, initiative, was born out of the recognition that there should be no compromise with quality clinical standards when it comes to health care in emergencies.
The Health Cluster coordinates more than 900 partners, currently working in 31 humanitarian response operations to save lives and alleviate the suffering of communities.
TEPHINET builds the capacities of the disease detectives of tomorrow with 76 Field Epidemiology Training Programs around the world.
And IANPHI brings together 115 national public health institutes in 98 countries into a common network.
Important regional networks include the African Union's African Health Volunteers Corps, the Americas Health Corps, and the European Union Health Task Force.
All of these are excellent examples of strengthening, standardising and scaling the health emergency workforce.
The challenge before us is to bring these networks together in a coherent and efficient manner, so they are connected and interoperable.
The Global Health Emergency Corps will strengthen and help to coordinate existing national, regional and global health emergency surge mechanisms and networks;
It will enhance interoperability between national and regional teams based on common standards and protocols; and establish a network of national health emergency leaders.
The success of the Global Health Emergency Corps depends on our collective support and commitment.
I urge governments, philanthropists, partners and networks from across the health emergency sector to support this effort with the necessary resources.
I was particularly pleased to see the G7 health ministers earlier this week declare their support for efforts such as this one.
I would like to thank Japan for its leadership in this regard, continuing the commitments of the Pact for Pandemic Readiness adopted last year under Germany’s G7 presidency.
WHO and our partners are committed to working with our Member States, regional bodies and platforms, and with you all to enhance cooperation, coordination and coherence to bolster health emergency leadership and surge capacities.
By doing so, we will fortify our global health emergency response architecture, enabling us to tackle future threats with greater resilience and effectiveness.
I thank you.