{"id":26490,"date":"2017-05-22T20:46:59","date_gmt":"2017-05-22T20:46:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/sustainabledevelopment\/?p=26490"},"modified":"2018-04-22T11:53:11","modified_gmt":"2018-04-22T15:53:11","slug":"in-final-address-un-health-chief-urges-world-body-to-remember-the-people-behind-the-facts-and-figures","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/sustainabledevelopment\/blog\/2017\/05\/in-final-address-un-health-chief-urges-world-body-to-remember-the-people-behind-the-facts-and-figures\/","title":{"rendered":"In final address, UN health chief urges world body to \u2018remember the people\u2019 behind the facts and figures"},"content":{"rendered":"

22 May 2017 \u2013 The outgoing chief of the United Nations health agency today highlighted the relevance of the World Health Organization (WHO<\/a>), and offered its decision-making body parting advice that included protecting scientific evidence, pushing for innovation and thinking of people in every decision that is taken.<\/p>\n

\u201cRemember the people<\/a>,\u201d WHO Director-General Margaret Chan told the 70th World Health Assembly in Geneva. \u201cBehind every number is a person who defines our common humanity and deserves our compassion, especially when suffering or premature death can be prevented.\u201d<\/p>\n

Among other advice, Dr. Chan, who steps down after two five-year terms, urged the body to work towards realizing the \u201ctremendous potential of vaccines. She noted that the current measles outbreak in Europe and North America would have never occurred, had immunization coverage not dropped below the necessary 95 per cent threshold.<\/p>\n

She also stressed the importance of listening to civil society, calling it \u201csociety\u2019s conscience\u201d and who can \u201cgive people who suffer the most a face and a voice.\u201d<\/p>\n

Refuting what she called \u201cfrequent criticism\u201d that WHO has lost its relevance, Dr. Chan pointed to a recently issued report tracking how public health has evolved during her 10 year administration.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is a tribute to the power of partnerships and the capacity of public health to take solutions found for one problem and apply them to others,\u201d the senior UN official said of the report.<\/p>\n

\"Opening<\/a>

Opening of the 70th World Health Assembly in Geneva, Switzerland. Photo: WHO<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

As an example, she noted that while it took nearly a decade to lower the prices of antiretroviral treatments for HIV, thanks to teamwork and collaboration, the prices for new drugs to cure hepatitis C fell within two years.<\/p>\n

\u2018We falter sometimes, but we never give up\u2019<\/em><\/h5>\n

\u201cThis is the culture of evidence-based learning that improves efficiency, gives health efforts their remarkable resilience, and keeps us irrepressibly optimistic,\u201d Dr. Chan said. \u201cWe falter sometimes, but we never give up.\u201d<\/p>\n

WHO\u2019s relevance was \u201cmost dramatically demonstrated\u201d during last month\u2019s global partnership meeting on neglected tropical diseases, she said. Participants celebrated a decade of \u201crecord-breaking progress\u201d to eliminate the diseases.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe fact that, in 2015, nearly one billion people received free treatments that protect them from diseases that blind, maim, deform, and debilitate has little impact on the world\u2019s geopolitical situation. The people being protected are among the poorest in the world,\u201d Dr. Chan said.<\/p>\n

She added that this was \u201ca success story that the world was hungry to hear.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dr. Chan did admit fault, however, in WHO\u2019s handling of the 2014 Ebola outbreak in West Africa<\/a>; the virus has recently re-emerged near the border of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Central African Republic.<\/p>\n

The outgoing chief said that \u201cWHO was too slow to recognize that the virus, during its first appearance in West Africa, would behave very differently than during past outbreaks in central Africa, where the virus was rare but familiar and containment measures were well-rehearsed.\u201d<\/p>\n

While the organization made \u201cquick course corrections\u201d to bring three outbreaks under control and helped create the first Ebola vaccine, the outbreak happened on Dr. Chan\u2019s watch \u201cand I am personally accountable.\u201d<\/p>\n

Current health challenges, elections top Assembly\u2019s agenda<\/em><\/h5>\n

The year\u2019s World Health Assembly, which includes 194 countries, will discuss what has been learned from that outbreak, as well as from WHO\u2019s handling of Zika and other diseases.<\/p>\n

Experts will also provide an update on how Angola responded to last year\u2019s Yellow Fever outbreak, which exhausted the global vaccine stockpile several times.<\/p>\n

The current cholera epidemic in war-torn Yemen is also on the agenda; only days ago, WHO described it as \u201cunprecedented.\u201d<\/p>\n

Polio is still causing misery and paralysis in three countries where it is endemic: Afghanistan, Pakistan and Nigeria, so delegates will continue to push for the complete eradication of the wild poliovirus, for which there is no cure, only prevention.<\/p>\n

In addition to tackling these health threats and many more, the World Health Assembly has one more important task \u2013 choosing Dr. Chan\u2019s successor. The three candidates hoping to step into her shoes after the vote tomorrow afternoon are Tedros Ghebreyesus from Ethiopia, David Nabarro from the UK, and Sania Nishtar from Pakistan.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Via UN News Centre<\/a>

<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The outgoing chief of the United Nations health agency today highlighted the relevance of the World Health Organization (WHO), and offered its decision-making body parting advice that included protecting scientific evidence, pushing for innovation and thinking of people in every decision that is taken.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":95,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[11,4],"tags":[277],"class_list":["post-26490","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-health","category-news","tag-health"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/sustainabledevelopment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26490","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/sustainabledevelopment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/sustainabledevelopment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/sustainabledevelopment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/95"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/sustainabledevelopment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26490"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/sustainabledevelopment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26490\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/sustainabledevelopment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26490"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/sustainabledevelopment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26490"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/sustainabledevelopment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26490"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}