The head of the World Health Organisation (WHO) has asked countries to carry out reforms required to prepare for the next pandemic.
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus’s comment came weeks after WHO ended the global health emergency status of the COVID-19 pandemic. He said that now is the right time to advance negotiations on preventing the next pandemic.
“We cannot kick this can down the road,” the WHO director-general said in a major address to the agency’s member states, warning that the next pandemic was bound to “come knocking”.
He added, “If we do not make the changes that must be made, then who will? And if we do not make them now, then when?”
Tedros was addressing the 10th annual World Health Assembly in Geneva. The assembly addressed topics ranging from global health challenges to the eradication of polio and supporting steps to ease Ukraine’s health emergency triggered by Russia’s invasion.
Additionally, WHO’s 194 member states have begun the process of drafting a pandemic treaty which will be adopted at next year’s assembly.
“A commitment from this generation (to a pandemic accord) is important because it is this generation that experienced how awful a small virus could be,” he said.
The same meeting saw the approval of a $6.83 billion budget for 2024-25. It includes a 20 per cent increase in contributions by member states under a preliminary agreement reached last year in exchange for a commitment to reforms including on budget, governance and finance policies.
US Assistant Secretary for International Organization Affairs Michele J. Sison said future increases would be “contingent upon continued reform progress”. Central and South American countries also called for the WHO to address what they described as chronic underfunding of their region.
With inputs from agencies
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