Your Excellency Dennis Francis, President of the General Assembly,
Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed,
The Right Honourable Helen Clark,
Dr Axel van Trotsenburg, Senior Managing Director of the World Bank Group.
Excellencies, Ministers, Heads of delegation dear colleagues and friends,
First, I would like to start by thanking the President and all Member States for endorsing the political declaration. This is a historic day.
“The doctors were unable to cope, since they were treating the disease for the first time and in ignorance.
“The more they came into contact with sufferers, the more liable they were to lose their own lives.
“In the end, people were overwhelmed by the disaster and abandoned efforts against it.
“I shall give a statement of what it was like, which people can study in case it should ever attack again, to equip themselves with foreknowledge so that they shall not fail to recognize it.”
These words could have been written last year. In fact, they were written in the fifth century BC, by the ancient Greek historian Thucydides, about the plague of Athens.
Almost two-and-a-half millennia later, the COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated that although much has changed, much has not.
It’s now more than four months since I declared an end to COVID-19 as a global health emergency.
This virus touched every person on the planet in some way.
It stole lives and livelihoods, and caused massive social and economic upheaval.
It exposed and exacerbated vast inequities and wide cracks in our defences.
And it reminded us that we are one humanity. A pathogen has no regard for the lines humans draw on maps, nor for the colour of our politics or the size of our economies.
We may be tempted to think that the COVID-19 pandemic is history.
But history teaches us that COVID-19 will not be the last pandemic.
The question we all face is whether we will be ready when the next one arrives.
As leaders, we have a collective responsibility to make sure we are ready.
We have a collective responsibility to protect the people we serve.
We have a collective responsibility to protect our societies and economies.
The political declaration you have just agreed today is a commitment that together, we will live up to our responsibility.
I thank Ambassador Omar Hilale of Morocco and Ambassador Gilad Erdan of Israel for your leadership of this process.
I urge all countries now to take urgent action on the commitments you have made, in support of the Member State-led processes in Geneva:
To deliver a strong pandemic accord and effective amendments to the International Health Regulations by May next year;
To ensure equitable access to vaccines, tests, treatments and other medical countermeasures;
To fight back against mis- and disinformation that erodes trust;
To protect communities by investing in primary health care;
To strengthen the global health workforce;
To make equity the driving force for change;
And to build a stronger WHO at the centre of the global health architecture.
Even before the pandemic, WHO was transforming to become more effective and efficient, and we will continue to transform.
Just as countries are learning the lessons from COVID-19, so we are learning those lessons.
We are committed to serving you to fulfil the vision that nations had when they founded WHO 75 years ago.
Their conviction then remains our conviction now: that health is not only a fundamental human right, but is also fundamental to peace and security.
Health is a fundamental human right, an end in itself, and also a means to development.
A healthier world is a safer, fairer, more peaceful and more prosperous world.
I thank you.