The Right Honourable Secretary of State for Scotland, Ian Murray,
Honourable Minister Maree Todd,
Vice-Chancellor and Principal, Professor Sir Peter Mathieson,
Vice Principal, Professor David Argyle,
Director of the Usher Institute, Professor Cathie Sudlow,
The Usher family, very honoured to meet you – a connection of 100 years.
Esteemed members of the University of Edinburgh community, dear colleagues and friends,
Good morning, and my thanks to Professor Argyle for that very kind introduction.
My thanks also to everyone at the University for your welcome and hospitality this morning.
On behalf of my colleagues at the World Health Organization, past and present, I am honoured and humbled to accept the inaugural Edinburgh Prize for Global Health Impact.
It’s also an honour for me to join you as we open the new Usher building here at the University of Edinburgh.
I am very happy to be back at this great university, of which I am a proud honorary alumnus.
As you all know, with 442 years of history, the University of Edinburgh was an academic training ground for notable leaders in science, politics and many other fields, including Charles Darwin, Alexander Graham Bell, and my good friend, former Prime Minister Gordon Brown.
The university also has a distinguished history of medical innovation, from James Young Simpson's development of chloroform anaesthesia to Joseph Lister’s introduction of antiseptic techniques in the 19th century.
More recently was the development of the first genetically engineered vaccine against Hepatitis B.
These days, among its many accomplishments, Edinburgh is doing cutting edge vaccine research, including in the areas of chronic inflammatory diseases, the innate immune system, and immune homeostasis and autoimmunity.
So, it is quite appropriate, and a particular honour, that the first Edinburgh Prize for Global Health Impact recognizes WHO’s work to provide children across the world access to life-saving vaccinations.
Vaccines are among most powerful innovations in history.
Thanks to vaccines, smallpox has been eradicated, and polio is on the brink.
Thanks to vaccines, once feared and deadly diseases like measles and Ebola are now preventable.
And with new vaccines against malaria and cervical cancer, we can save more lives than ever.
Vaccines help individuals, families, communities, economies and nations to thrive.
Every dollar invested in vaccines delivers a return of US$ 54 in healthier children, who are to learn and earn, and become the scientists, teachers, politicians, artists and innovators of the future.
Fifty years ago, in 1974, WHO established a groundbreaking initiative to dramatically expand access to vaccines: the Expanded Programme on Immunization – known as EPI.
At the time, less than 5% of the world’s children were immunized. Today, that figure stands at 83%.
The success of EPI is due to health workers in every country who deliver vaccines in communities, sometimes at great risk.
Some have even lost their lives vaccinating against polio in Afghanistan and Pakistan, or in other outbreaks in insecure areas.
EPI is also a foundation for pandemic and emergency prevention, preparedness and response.
The EPI programme was the basis for the COVID vaccine response in many countries, and is the programme that responds to outbreaks of other vaccine-preventable diseases, day in and day out.
Thanks to EPI, an infant born today is 40% more likely to survive to their first birthday than they were fifty years ago.
Since 1974, EPI has helped to save an estimated 154 million lives, from diseases like measles, tetanus, diphtheria and pneumonia.
And since 2000, under-five mortality has dropped by more than half, thanks largely to the power of vaccines. And by the way, 2000 was the birth of the Gavi Alliance as well.
A large part of that success has been thanks to the Gavi Alliance, a revolutionary partnership between WHO, UNICEF, the World Bank, civil society, industry and more.
Just yesterday I was in Brussels for Gavi’s replenishment event.
As you are all aware, it came at a difficult time in global health, with drastic cuts in aid, which come after disruptions to immunization programmes in many countries due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and misinformation about vaccine safety.
As a result, old killers like measles and diphtheria are resurging.
So, I was very encouraged yesterday that donors pledged more than US$ 9 billion to support Gavi’s work over the next five years.
We are deeply grateful, especially to the United Kingdom, which has been one of the most steadfast supporters of both WHO and Gavi, and with its contribution yesterday, was the largest from a single donor.
As you are all aware, WHO has also been affected by cuts in aid by the United States and other countries, which are reducing official development assistance to fund increased defence spending – a sad sign of the times.
For several years we have been transforming the Organization to make it more effective and efficient.
We have reduced our costs and implemented several measures to make our funding more sustainable and secure in the long-term.
Even so, we unfortunately have no choice now but to say goodbye to a significant number of dedicated and talented colleagues.
I am very conscious of the impact on them, their careers and their families.
At the same time, in every crisis is an opportunity, and I am confident that WHO will emerge from this situation stronger, sharper and more focused on our core mandate, more empowered to serve the nations and people of the world.
But of course, WHO is just one small part of a much bigger picture.
Around the world, the dramatic reductions in aid that I mentioned are having severe impacts on health services in many countries, especially developing countries.
We see disruptions affecting millions of people who are missing out on life-saving services and medicines, including vaccines; health facilities are being forced to close; supply chains and information systems are disrupted; and out-of-pocket health spending is on the rise.
WHO is supporting countries to navigate this crisis and sustain health services.
But again, in the crisis lies an opportunity.
Many health ministers have told me that this crisis can also help them to leave behind the era of aid dependency and move towards sustainable self-reliance, by mobilizing domestic resources.
On the vaccine front, WHO is supporting countries and regions to increase local vaccine production, especially in Africa.
One of the lessons of the COVID-19 pandemic was that production of vaccines and other tools was concentrated in too few countries.
With the launch of the African Vaccine Manufacturing Accelerator, WHO is supporting the African Union to reach its target of producing 60% of the continent’s vaccines by 2040.
In 2021, WHO established the mRNA Technology Transfer Programme, which is now sharing technology from its base in South Africa with 15 partner countries globally.
In 2023 we also established the WHO Biomanufacturing Workforce Training Initiative, including a Global Training Hub in the Republic of Korea.
WHO also supports access to vaccines through our prequalification programme, and the advice of the WHO Strategic Advisory Group of Experts on Immunization;
We support strengthening of regulatory systems – Rwanda, Botswana and Ghana are all on their way to the top level of regulatory robustness, for example.
And we’re also supporting stronger national and continental institutions including the African Medicines Agency and the Africa CDC, because strengthening the continental institutions could support the continent.
At the World Health Assembly last month, the nations of the world made history by adopting the WHO Pandemic Agreement. And having a Pandemic Agreement in the middle of all of this geopolitical tension is actually a sign that multilateralism is alive and well. So good news in the middle of all of these crises.
One of its key elements is an agreement between nations to ensure equitable access to vaccines in the next pandemic, because that was one of the major challenges during COVID.
The rapid development of safe and effective vaccines against COVID-19 was a triumph for science, but inequitable access to those vaccines was a collective global failure that cost lives.
WHO’s Member States have recognized that in a world divided by politics and ideology, diseases do not recognize borders – they don’t recognize the maps we draw.
Shared threats need a shared response. And that means vaccine equity. Not for some, but for all.
WHO was founded 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.
Thank you once again for this great honour, which I accept on behalf of WHO, and on behalf of my colleagues, past and present.
And thank you for your commitment to promoting, providing and protecting health for all.
I thank you.