The director-general of the World Health Organization (WHO) defended this Sunday, at the start of the annual meeting, that the treaty on pandemics should be a historic agreement and a paradigm shift, similar to the framework treaty on tobacco control.
“Like the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, the pandemic treaty that member states are negotiating should be a historic agreement that marks a paradigm shift in health security,” said WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
The WHO today opened its annual meeting to mark its 75th anniversary and major advances in public health, in which it will strive for states to guarantee more stable funding to carry out its work and to establish a new international support the treaty to help the world better cope with future pandemics.
The treaty, which includes all tobacco control measures, is the only legal instrument negotiated by the WHO and currently binds 182 countries.
The WHO hopes that the treaty on the pandemic, which aims to fill the main gaps in the fight against COVID-19, will become the second agreement of its kind within a year, as it is planned to be adopted on the WHO meeting. in 2024.
The meeting is attended by ministers and health officials from virtually all 194 member states, at a time when the organization is seeking approval for measures to address a growing number of health crises in different parts of the world, exacerbated by armed conflict and the impacts of climate change .
In his opening address, Tedros Ghebreyesus cited key milestones in WHO history, such as the eradication of measles and the near-eradication of poliomyelitis and dracunculiasis, a disabling parasitic disease, and, with regard to the latter, the extraordinary expansion of vaccination.
Thirty diseases are currently vaccine-preventable, of which thirteen are considered essential in national immunization programs. Vaccines against Ebola and Malaria have recently been approved.
Ghebreyesus also referred to the increase in life expectancy (from 43 to 73 years since the establishment of the WHO, with greater progress in the poorest countries), the reduction in infant and maternal mortality, and progress in controlling HIV and tuberculosis epidemics.
The Director-General of WHO has declared smoking to be a pandemic despite the public’s failure to identify it as such, whose causal link to lung cancer was scientifically proven in 1952, and the prevalence of smoking has been increasing ever since.
In the short term, Ghebreyesus cited controlling the rise in chronic disease, responsible for 70 percent of global deaths, obesity, as well as improving mental health care, which Covid-19 has shown to be the weakest part of health systems.
On the occasion of its annual meeting, which runs until the 30th, WHO announced the establishment of an international surveillance network to timely detect and share information about emerging infectious diseases that may threaten international public health.
To that end, the organization said it will provide a platform that countries in all regions can access to track pathogens and share information, including samples of infectious agents.
Source: DN
