New York: Europe and the Arabs
The Secretary-General of the United Nations, António Guterres, called on countries to benefit from the lessons learned from previous health emergencies to help prepare for future health emergencies.
This came in his message on the occasion of the International Day of Epidemic Preparedness, which falls on December 27.
The Secretary-General said that the COVID-19 pandemic was a wake-up call to alert the world, adding that "this crisis may have passed, but the harsh lesson learned from it remains: the world is woefully unprepared to confront the next pandemic. Outbreaks of monkeypox, cholera, polio and Marburg fever are a terrible reminder that infectious diseases remain a real and present threat to every country." According to the UN daily news bulletin, a copy of which we received this morning,
He pointed out that learning from the lessons learned means building resilient public and primary health care systems that deliver on the promise of universal health coverage, making bold investments in pandemic surveillance, detection and response, and ensuring equitable access to life-saving tools such as vaccines, treatments and diagnostics. He explained that this also means, first and foremost, global solidarity.
He called on countries to implement the historic pandemic agreement to ensure that the entire world works better to prevent and contain future pandemics.