At the Global Health Summit held online (24–26 October), the President of the European Council, Charles Michel, once again championed on Monday 25 October the global health governance that the EU is calling for by promoting a binding international treaty on pandemics.
Last week, the European Council expressed its support for the World Health Organization to play a strong and central role in the future global governance of health and for the conclusion of such a treaty.
At the start of his speech to the press, Mr Michel congratulated WHO and Germany for launching in May the WHO Intelligence Hub for pandemics and epidemics.
According to the WHO, the Hub will be a global platform for providing shared and networked access to multi-sectoral data, fostering innovations in data analysis and creating the communities of practitioners that are needed to predict, prevent, detect, prepare for and respond to global health threats.
According to Mr Michel, “this intelligence hub will be an important step in bolstering our international cooperation. A clear demonstration of the benefits in setting up collaborative tools that work across sectors. Especially tools that involve both private and public stakeholders and operate on any continent.”.
However, Charles Michel is aware that several countries “are still reluctant for there to be an international treaty”.
As components for global governance, he cited the lessons learned by the EU from its handling of the pandemic, namely: - coordination, which is “vital”; - “the value of fact-based and objective decisions”; - “solidarity is the gold standard in overcoming this pandemic”.
Calling it a “great achievement for the EU” that 75% of adults in the EU had been fully vaccinated, he also called for “the gap in vaccination rates with developing countries to be solved” and said he hoped that there would be more investment in the One Healthinitiative.
See the speech: https://bit.ly/3vGj9eZ (Original version in French by Aminata Niang)