Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus,Director-General,World Health Organisation
Highlighting that COVID-19 is not the only health threat the world’s people will face next year, he said, millions of people have missed out on routine vaccination, services for family planning, treatment for communicable and non-communicable diseases
Geneva:
As the world enters its third year of the COVID-19 pandemic, the World Health Organisation (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said he was confident that the pandemic will end in 2022 “if we end inequity” together.
On Friday, Tedros said “while no country is out of the woods from the pandemic, we have many new tools to prevent and treat COVID-19. The longer inequity continues, the higher the risks of this virus evolving in ways we can’t prevent or predict. If we end inequity, we end the pandemic.”
As we enter the third year of the COVID-19 pandemic, I’m confident that this will be the year we end it – but only if we do it together, he said.
Highlighting that COVID-19 is not the only health threat the world’s people will face next year, he said, millions of people have missed out on routine vaccination, services for family planning, treatment for communicable and non-communicable diseases.
He further said that WHO recommended broad use of the world’s first malaria vaccine, which if introduced widely and urgently, could save tens of thousands of lives every year.
“The eradication of polio has never been closer, with just five cases recorded in the two remaining endemic countries. And tobacco use continues to decline. Meanwhile, WHO and our partners responded to crises around the world, including stopping new outbreaks of Ebola and Marburg,” WHO chief said.
He further stated that to help prepare the world for future epidemics and pandemics, we established the new WHO BioHub System for countries to share novel biological materials.
And we opened the WHO Hub for Pandemic and Epidemic Intelligence in Berlin, to leverage innovations in data science for public health surveillance and response, WHO chief added.
He reiterated that “we need all countries to work together to reach the global target of vaccinating 70 per cent of people in all countries by the middle of 2022.”
The world has recently witnessed a new variant of COVID-19, which has been detected in South Africa, as ‘Omicron’. The WHO has classified Omicron as a ‘variant of concern’.
Earlier in the year, during meetings of the world’s biggest economies – the G7 and G20 – WHO challenged leaders to vaccinate 40 per cent of their populations by the end of 2021 and 70 per cent by the middle of 2022.
Tedros attributed this to low-income countries receiving a limited supply for most of the year and then subsequent vaccines arriving close to expiry, without key parts, like syringes.
“Forty per cent was doable. It’s not only a moral shame, it cost lives and provided the virus with opportunities to circulate unchecked and mutate”, he said.
The WHO chief warned that boosters in rich countries could cause low-income countries to again fall short and called on leaders of wealthy countries and manufacturers to work together to reach the 70 per cent goal by July.
“This is the time to rise above short-term nationalism and protect populations and economies against future variants by ending global vaccine inequity”, he said.
“We have 185 days to the finish line of achieving 70 per cent by the start of July 2022. And the clock starts now”.
Early on, Tedros acknowledged that beating the new health threat would require science, solutions, and solidarity.
While elaborating on some successes, such as the development of new vaccines, which he said “represent a scientific masterclass”, the WHO official lamented that politics too often triumphed over solidarity.
“Populism, narrow nationalism and hoarding of health tools, including masks, therapeutics, diagnostics and vaccines, by a small number of countries undermined equity, and created the ideal conditions for the emergence of new variants”, Tedros said.
Moreover, misinformation and disinformation, have also been “a constant distraction, undermining science and trust in lifesaving health tools”.
He highlighted as a case in point that huge waves of infections have swept Europe and many other countries causing the unvaccinated to die disproportionally.
The unvaccinated are many times more at risk of dying from either variant.
Future
As the pandemic drags on, new variants could become fully resistant to current vaccines or past infection, necessitating vaccine adaptations.
For Tedros, as any new vaccine update could mean a new supply shortage, it is important to build up local manufacturing supply.
One way to increase production of lifesaving tools, he said, is to pool technology, as in the new WHO Bio Hub System, a mechanism to voluntarily share novel biological materials.
Finally, the WHO chief called for the development of a new accord between nations, saying it would be “a key pillar” of a world better prepared to deal with the next disease.
“I hope to see negotiations move swiftly and leaders to act with ambition”, he said.