"First, prevention and preparedness.
Through the
@Pandemic_Fund with the World Bank, WHO supported 70 countries to develop and implement 41 projects to strengthen surveillance, laboratory networks, workforce capacity and multisectoral coordination.
Twenty-one countries completed joint external evaluations, 195 states parties submitted their annual IHR reports, and 25 countries completed their National Action Plan for Health Security.
The Global Health Emergency Corps ran its second simulation exercise, Exercise Polaris two, involving 600 health emergency experts and 25 partner organizations from 26 countries and territories.
And just this weekend we just launched our the Global Health Emergency Strategy, with a target to have 10 percent of the world’s health workforce ready to respond to emergencies by 2030.
The R&D Blueprint for Epidemics brought together global expertise to prioritize research and close preparedness gaps for high-risk pathogens, including avian influenza, Rift Valley fever, Oropouche disease, and Ebola.
The WHO Hub for Pandemic and Epidemic Intelligence launched an update of the Epidemic Intelligence from Open Sources system – EIOS – which harnesses the power of AI to support more than 120 countries who use the platform every day to quickly identify new threats.
Through the International Pathogen Surveillance Network, over 309 partners across 101 countries are also strengthening genomic surveillance to better track pathogens, detect new variants, and guide faster responses to emerging threats.
In the past year, the Global Influenza Surveillance and Response System, GISRS – a network of 165 institutions in 136 countries – tested more than 11 million clinical specimens and shared 65 000 virus samples with WHO Collaborating Centres.
Through the Pandemic Influenza Preparedness Framework – PIP – WHO signed eight new agreements, giving us access to more than 940 million vaccine doses in the event of an influenza pandemic, as well as antivirals, syringes and diagnostics.
The WHO BioHub coordinated 17 sample shipments to laboratories in ten countries, to guide research and development of countermeasures.
We were also on the ground, supporting countries to prevent outbreaks of high-threat diseases.
We supported preventative vaccination for Ebola for approximately 170 000 front line workers in the Central African Republic, DRC, Guinea Bissau, Uganda and Sierra Leone.
We also established a new stockpile for a monoclonal antibody against Ebola, with hundreds of treatment courses ready to be shipped in 24 hours if an outbreak is confirmed.
After a three year break we re-established preventive cholera vaccination, allocating 50 million doses to Bangladesh, DRC and Mozambique, thanks in part to a doubling of supply.
And to protect against outbreaks of yellow fever, we supported the vaccination of more than 38 million people in the DRC, Guinea-Bissau, Niger and Uganda"-
@DrTedros #WHA79