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The coronavirus pandemic will not be the last pandemic, and attempts to improve human health are “doomed to fail” without addressing climate change and animal welfare, warns the head of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus condemns the “myopia” that persists in spending money without taking into account the outbreak of an epidemic and doing nothing to prepare for the next. He says it is time to learn from the COVID-19 pandemic.
“For too long, the world has gone through a cycle of panic and abandonment. We throw money at one household, and when it runs out, we forget it and do nothing to stop the next. This is dangerously short-sighted and difficult to understand,” said the WHO chief.
The Global Preparedness Monitoring Board’s first annual report in September 2019 on global readiness for health emergencies, released a few months before the pandemic outbreak, highlighted that the planet was not prepared for potentially devastating pandemics.
“History tells us that this will not be the last pandemic, and epidemics are a reality of life,” Tedros said, according to Le Figaro, taken over by Mediafax.
“The pandemic has highlighted the links between human, animal and planetary health,” he added.
“Any effort to improve human health is doomed if it does not address the critical human-animal interface and the existential threat of climate change, which makes our earth less habitable,” he said.
Long-term consequences
The new coronavirus has killed at least 1.75 million people and nearly 80 million cases have been reported since the outbreak broke out in China in December last year, according to an AFP report.
“In the last 12 months, our world has been turned upside down. The impact of the pandemic far outweighs the disease itself, with far-reaching consequences for societies and economies,” added Tedros.
He also said that this coronavirus crisis should not have come as a surprise, given the repeated warnings.
“We all need to learn the lessons of the pandemic,” he added.
Publisher: BP
