Tedros calls for strengthening primary care while UNAIDS denounces inequalities in the response to the coronavirus
BAKU, March 10. (From the special envoy of Europa Press, Borja Aranda) –
The director general of the World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, has advocated this Friday for a “paradigm shift” to improve the health structure at an international level through a five-point program that includes a strengthening of primary care systems.
Tedros, who has sent a video to participate in the framework of the second day of the X Global Forum in Baku, organized by the Nizami Ganjavi International Center, has stressed that this paradigm shift must include “the entire government and the entire society” to make tangible progress, at a time when the world “recovers and rebuilds” after the coronavirus pandemic.
Thus, he has defended the WHO proposal on the reinforcement of five priorities known as ‘the five P’, for its acronym in English: promote, give, protect, empower and act. Tedros has highlighted that “even before the pandemic” the international community was “far” from materializing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), before asserting that now it is “even further”.
The SDGs, adopted in September 2015, include a set of global objectives to be achieved, including the end of poverty, zero hunger, gender equality, the reduction of inequalities, responsible production and consumption, peace and justice and issues of health and well-being and clean water and sanitation.
“We must recognize that health does not start in hospitals and clinics, but in homes, streets, schools, jobs, markets and jobs”, explained Tedros, who stated that “much Part of the work carried out by the Ministries of Health is to address the consequences of unhealthy living, unsafe water, poor hygiene, environmental pollution, dangerous roads and jobs, and harmful market products”.
For this reason, he has advocated for “a radical reorientation of health systems towards primary care” and has detailed that “more than 90 percent of essential health services can be provided through primary care, including vaccination, prevention and treatment of communicable and non-communicable diseases and sexual and reproductive health services”.
“Strong primary care can avoid or postpone the need for more expensive secondary or tertiary treatment,” recalled Tedros, who pointed out that this network “also plays a key role in detecting outbreaks in their early phase” and has committed to “protect by strengthening preparation, response and resilience at the local, national, regional and global levels”.
“Part of this architecture is being built”, stressed the director general of the WHO, who also called for “promoting health by addressing signs, research, innovation, data, digital technologies and association”, as well as “act for health by building a stronger and more agile WHO that is better positioned to help countries achieve their national priorities.”
Lastly, he recalled that 2023 marks the 75th anniversary of the founding of the WHO –specifically on April 7, 1948–, for which he added “more than ever, the world needs firm and visionary leadership and global cooperation rooted in solidarity to realize this right (to health)”.
INEQUALITY AND “GLOBAL PUBLIC GOODS”
The executive director of the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), Winnie Byanyima, has participated in this same panel, who has denounced that during the coronavirus pandemic, “as in another pandemic that is still underway, the HIV pandemic, drug companies focused on rich countries and maximizing profits for themselves.”
Byanyima has reviewed that “Pfizer earned 37,800 million dollars only through its vaccine against the coronavirus in 2020” and has pointed out that “if governments had shared vaccines equally with the world, 1.3 million could have been saved lives in the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“That is a preventable death every 24 seconds. We could have saved those lives,” he lamented, before stressing that “today, 26 percent of the population in the global south (…) have received only a dose of the vaccine, while in rich countries 72 percent have received it.
In this sense, he has argued that “technologies that save lives, such as vaccines, must be treated as global public goods” that “cannot be sold in the same way as a smartphone.” Thus, he has said that “technology transfer to the global south has to take place.”
Likewise, he has asked to support the efforts to build this architecture if there is a will to avoid “being asleep in the face of a new pandemic” and has outlined that “global leaders have to solve the structural problems that are creating this type of inequalities, which derive in millions of deaths.
“It is the duty of governments and leaders to solve these structural problems in trade rules, in intellectual property rules and in tax rules,” said Byanyima, who regretted that the talks to “resolve the gaps” in the system world health are being “politicized” by “the tensions between East and West”. “The preparation for the prevention and response to pandemics is being negotiated. It could be completed in July of next year,” she recalled.
POLITIZATION OF THE CONVERSATIONS
However, he has denounced that “efforts” are underway to extract from these works the issues on access to vaccines and health technology, which could delay “20 years” an agreement on this point, “which would benefit companies, which They would continue to make profits while people die.”
In a third intervention, the deputy director of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Najat Mojtar, has warned that the world “is not far from another pandemic” and has cited the recent cases of monkey smallpox in Europe and the death at the end of February of a girl in Cambodia from bird flu.
Mojtar has opted to “strengthen” work in the veterinary field and recalled that “COVID-19 came from an animal”. “We are building the largest ever network of veterinary laboratories to be equipped, trained and to go into the field to test for pathogens, monitor them and prevent spread to humans,” he said.
In this way, he lamented that “research and technology is not financed in developing countries” and has advocated “uniting countries from the north and the south, developed and developing, to carry out research work”, before noting that the COVID-19 pandemic “has caused a delay of decades”.
The deputy director general of the IAEA has therefore requested a “holistic position” and has stressed that the absence of technology in countries of the global south is having a serious impact on the health of the population, stating for example that “30 countries in Africa do not have access to medical imaging and radiation therapy.
“50 percent of patients need radiotherapy or are at risk of dying,” he warned, while indicating that the IAEA launched the ‘Rays for Hope’ initiative last year, in cooperation with the African Union (AU ), to “work with countries to give everyone access to early diagnosis and treatment.” “We are very far from giving access to everyone,” she has settled.
