Agencies – Geneva:
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the World Health Organization, urged member states to undertake the necessary reforms to prepare for any next pandemic and to fulfill their previous pledges to increase funding for the United Nations organization. He was speaking at the organization’s General Assembly, weeks after the end of the global emergency related to the COVID-19 pandemic. Tedros said it was time to advance negotiations on preventing the next pandemic.
“We cannot postpone this,” the director-general of the organization said in a speech to member states, warning that the next epidemic was likely to “happen soon.” “If we don’t implement the necessary changes, who will? And if we don’t implement it now, when?
The annual meetings of the General Assembly, which lasts ten days in Geneva and coincides with the seventy-fifth anniversary of the founding of the organization, are scheduled to address many global health challenges, including future epidemics.
The WHO’s 194 member states are currently negotiating an overhaul of binding rules that set out states’ obligations in the event of a global health threat, and are also working on a broader pandemic treaty, due to be ratified next year.
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