Your Excellency Jutta Urpilainen,
Your Excellency Norbert Barthle,
Your Excellency Amira el Fadil,
Excellencies, dear colleagues and friends,
Thank you for the opportunity of addressing you today.
WHO is deeply grateful to Team Europe for its strong support for WHO and for multilateralism throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.
More than 50 million cases of COVID-19 have now been reported to WHO, with over 1.2 million deaths.
Although data are scarce, millions more may have died due to disruption of essential health services.
As I said to the World Health Assembly this week, we may be tired of COVID-19, but it is not tired of us.
Here in Europe, countries are now struggling to cope with a fresh wave of infections and deaths.
But the virus itself has not changed significantly, and nor have the measures needed to stop it.
We know what works.
First, know your epidemic and do the basics well. Find, isolate, test and care for cases. Trace and quarantine their contacts.
And second, engage and empower communities to protect themselves and others with the full range of measures: physical distance, avoiding crowds, ventilation, hand hygiene, and masks.
Of course, a vaccine is needed urgently.
But we cannot simply wait for a vaccine, and we cannot put all our eggs in one basket.
As the first encouraging results of vaccine trials arrive, the world is approaching a decisive moment.
Will countries share the fruits of science with those who need it most? Or will the poorest and most vulnerable miss out?
We very much appreciate the leadership of Team Europe to ensure that doesn’t happen.
Together, we have already delivered critical supplies, technical advice, training, and surge capacity to countries with weaker health systems, including in Eastern Europe, Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific.
But even as we supported countries with evidence-based tools, we also knew that we would need new tools to truly bring the pandemic under control, and that those tools must be accessible to all countries equitably.
That’s why WHO proposed the Access to COVID-19 Tools Accelerator, a unique mechanism with two aims: to develop vaccines, diagnostics and therapeutics fast, and to allocate them fairly.
WHO is very grateful to France, Germany and the European Commission for their support in establishing the ACT Accelerator, to ensure these life-saving tools are allocated fairly as global public goods, not as private commodities.
We’re all in this together, and we can only truly get out of it together.
The pandemic is a reminder that international cooperation is the only option in the face of an international crisis.
COVID-19 has strained the multilateral system, but it has not broken it.
On the contrary, it has shown why it is so important, and why it must be strengthened.
In that regard, we welcome the recent EU Council Conclusions calling for the strengthening of WHO as the leading and coordinating authority in addressing global health challenges.
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Today I would like to suggest three fundamental shifts that WHO believes all countries must make.
First, invest in public health.
Many countries have made huge investments and advances in medicine, but too many have neglected their basic public health systems, which are the bedrock for preventing, preparing for, detecting and responding to outbreaks.
Second, take a One Health approach.
The pandemic has highlighted the intimate links between the health of humans, animals and planet, which we can only address with a One Health approach.
Any efforts to improve human health are doomed unless they address these critical interfaces and the threat of climate change.
Third, go beyond the health sector.
We will not prevent the next pandemic by focusing only on strengthening health systems.
The pandemic has affected every sector, so it stands to reason that every sector must be involved in the recovery, and in preparedness.
Just as the pandemic requires an all-of-government, all-of-society response, so does promoting and protecting health.
We need to build mutual trust and accountability for health, by bringing nations and partners together to support a whole-of-government approach to strengthening national capacities for pandemic preparedness, universal health coverage and healthier populations.
Invest in public health. Take a One Health Approach. And go beyond the health sector.
These are the fundamental shifts I believe our world must make, both to safeguard against future health emergencies, and to promote and protect the health of everyone, everywhere.
Thank you.