Thank you Mike,
During the Assembly, talking a lot I lost my voice, so it’s a bit difficult.
I had dinner yesterday and it was a very good time, and Mike asked me to speak about myself and nothing else, so I told my story. Many of you were not there, but I think a good number of you.
As Mike indicated earlier, growing up in Ethiopia could be difficult, and in my early childhood I was trapped in a war and my mother’s prayer was for me to survive just one day. She has been very grateful for that one day, and of course, here I am as Director-General of the World Health Organization, and I fully agree with you that hope is the most precious thing, Mike. Probably that was what was going on in my mother’s head, to stay hopeful and be grateful. And that’s it, and here I am.
So anything is possible, if we keep hope. Especially now, as our world is getting a bit crazy – not a bit actually, really crazy – but we need to stay hopeful and hope it will be better.
Chancellor Michael Collins, my brother,
President Martin Meehan,
Madame Vice-Chair Mary Burns,
Congressman Jim McGovern,
Distinguished guests, students, faculty, family and friends,
It’s such a great honour for me to be here, first to receive this honorary degree, which I accept with a mixture of pride and humility – humility, if there’s one thing that my upbringing taught me;
And second, it’s an honour for me to join you as we open the new education and research building here at the University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School.
I thank Chancellor Collins for the invitation, and for this great honour – and thank you Maryellen, wherever you are now, for your hospitality in meeting us at the airport yesterday.
Mike has been to visit us at WHO in Geneva, as he said, a couple of times, and we have discussed how WHO and UMass Chan Medical School can work together. So thank you for creating that bridge, Mike.
I offer my congratulations to you, and the entire School community, on the opening of this building.
Although the building is new, its twin purposes – education and research – are not.
They have always been central to the mission of this School, just as they have always been central to improvements in health globally, and to our work at the World Health Organization.
I note that this building is designed to facilitate expanded class sizes to meet growing workforce needs, in Massachusetts and beyond.
I also note that just a few days ago, the School graduated the largest class in its history. Congratulations to all graduates.
It would have been an honour for me to receive my honorary degree with you, but the World Health Assembly only finished at midnight on Saturday, and was followed by a board meeting.
I’m particularly pleased to note the School’s emphasis on primary care, which is the essential foundation of any health system.
WHO estimates that about 90% of essential health services can be delivered at the primary health care level.
And yet for too long, too many countries have focused their investments on advanced medical care in high-tech hospitals, but neglected investments in primary health care.
Certainly, high-quality secondary and tertiary care are very important.
But investments in primary health care are the most cost effective, in terms of the returns delivered in preventing or delaying the need for more costly secondary and tertiary care.
A primary health care approach is also vital for addressing the drivers of disease in the food people eat, the air they breathe and the conditions in which they live.
And as the eyes and ears of the health system, primary health care is also essential for preventing, detecting and responding to outbreaks at the earliest stage.
But of course, primary care does not deliver itself.
Vaccines do not administer themselves;
Caesarean sections do not perform themselves;
And care, compassion and kindness do not deliver themselves.
They all require a person – and not just any person – they require a health or care worker.
The simple truth is that there is no health without health and care workers.
Certainly, artificial intelligence and other technologies offer huge potential for research, and for diagnosis, treatment and service delivery.
One of our priorities at WHO is supporting countries to harness the power of technology for health.
But nothing will ever replace a health worker.
The COVID-19 pandemic showed us just how important they are.
And yet globally, we are facing a shortage of 10 million health and care workers to achieve the health-related targets in the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030.
Unsurprisingly, the biggest gaps are in the poorest countries, although it’s a challenge you face here in the U.S. as well, as populations age and health needs grow.
That’s why one of our other major initiatives has been to develop the WHO Academy in Lyon, France, which we will open in December this year – and I’m glad to invite Mike to join us. It will be a game changer.
Our aim is that the WHO Academy will become a global centre for lifelong learning in health, and for building capacities for the health and care workforce globally, as well as for WHO’s own workforce.
The building is beautiful, but I think I have to admit this is more beautiful.
Our aim is not to compete with other academic and health institutions, but rather to collaborate and complement them through partnerships.
So Chancellor Collins, we would very much welcome the opportunity to discuss with you how the WHO Academy could partner with UMass Chan Medical School, to leverage your expertise and experience for the world.
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So, just as this new building will provide a platform for education, so too it will provide a platform for building on the School’s impressive track record in research – in HIV, cancer, diabetes, infectious disease, and in understanding the molecular basis of disease.
And of course, Dr Craig Mello’s Nobel Prize-winning research on RNA interference has opened the door to new treatments against many diseases.
I’m pleased to see the School continues to build on Dr Mello’s work, including through the RNA Therapeutics Institute and the Gene Therapy Center.
Research has given us so many solutions to so many health challenges.
Research has given us vaccines, antibiotics and other medicines, with which we can prevent, diagnose and treat diseases that were once a death sentence.
Research has helped us to identify the cause of diseases that were once a mystery, like malaria, TB, HIV, cervical cancer and more.
Research has enabled to us to peer ever further into what makes us human – to map our genome, and even to edit it, thanks to the research of Dr Mello and others.
And research continues to push back the boundaries of the impossible and the unknown.
The key challenge we face is to ensure that the fruits of research are available to all people; that they serve to narrow inequalities, rather than widen them.
The COVID-19 pandemic was a perfect example. The development and approval of multiple safe and effective vaccines in less than a year was a triumph for science and research.
But as you know, inequitable access to those vaccines globally was a stain on our collective conscience. This should not be repeated.
At the World Health Assembly in Geneva last week, the nations of the world took decisive steps towards making the world safer, and more equitable.
Based on lessons learned from the pandemic, they adopted an important set of amendments to the International Health Regulations – the instrument of international law that governs the global response to health emergencies.
They also agreed to extend negotiations for another year on a new Pandemic Agreement.
Initially, countries had committed to finalizing the Agreement in time for last week’s Health Assembly, and although they came a long way, they were not able to reach consensus in time.
The two-year timeframe they gave themselves was extremely ambitious.
The fact that they came as close as they did in just two years is frankly incredible, because as you know, international agreements and laws take many years.
If they complete negotiations this year, or by next May at the latest – that’s what they have agreed – it would still be a giant achievement in very short time.
They have committed to doing that for two reasons:
First, because they believe they can, and will, reach agreement;
And second, because they believe the Pandemic Agreement is still needed urgently, because history teaches us that the next pandemic is a matter of when, not if.
However, the negotiations have been undermined by a torrent of mis- and disinformation, including false claims that nations will cede sovereignty to WHO, which is not true.
So I ask all of you to speak up for the Pandemic Agreement, and to speak out against mis- and disinformation – because this Agreement belongs to you, it belongs to all of us. It’s about making the world safer for everyone.
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Dear friends,
Dr Craig Mello said, “I want to make a difference in the world because I believe that’s what science is for.”
And that’s what this building is for. I think Mike said this building will change the course of the history of disease.
Not education for the sake of education;
Not research for the sake of research;
But education and research to make a difference in our world.
To save lives;
To prevent suffering;
And to close inequities.
That’s what this building is for, and that’s what the work that we do at WHO is all about. We share the same purpose.
We were founded 76 years ago, in 1948, as the world emerged from the devastation of the Second World War.
Like the United Nations of which we are part, WHO was born of the recognition that the only alternative to global conflict was global cooperation.
Our Constitution was the first instrument of international law to affirm that the highest attainable standard of health is a fundamental right for all people, without distinction. A fundamental human right.
Not a privilege for some, or for most; it’s a right for all.
That is the right for which as WHO we will continue to work.
And that is the right that I hope and expect this building will serve.
Thank you once again for this great honour.
And thank you for your commitment to promoting, providing and protecting the health of the people of Massachusetts, and the United States, and the world.
I would like to also thank my family, my wife Kidist and Brook, my son, and Blen. By the way, this is not the whole family, what you see.
I have five kids with my wife, four boys and finally a girl, that’s Blen.
From the start, I wanted to have a daughter, but she wouldn’t come, and then on the fifth she came.
I’m a bit stubborn, I don’t give up, because I always say it’s possible, you can get what you want. Then she came and she was born on my birthday, so we share the same birthday.
So as you can imagine, they support me well, so I would like to thank them for their support, and thank you also to Mike for bringing me into this family. We look forward to working with you closely. We have already identified something where UMass Chan has a comparative advantage, and we look forward to using UMass as a collaborating centre for WHO, and through that, your influence will continue to increase globally.
Thank you so much. Thank you.