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GENEVA: The head of the World Health Organization welcomed efforts on Monday (November 9) to strengthen the Geneva-based body through reform and said he looked forward to working closely with the president-elect’s administration. from the United States, Joe Biden.
“We welcome any and all efforts to strengthen this organization not for its own sake, but for the people we serve,” WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told ministers of health at the beginning of your resumed annual meeting.
US President Donald Trump has accused the WHO of being “China-centric” in its handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, an accusation Tedros has repeatedly denied.
Trump has frozen US funding to the WHO and has begun a process that would see the United States withdraw from the body next July, sparking widespread international criticism amid the pandemic.
Biden has said he will overturn Trump’s decision to leave the WHO on his first day in office.
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Tedros urged the international community to regain a sense of common purpose, adding, “In that spirit, we congratulate President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris and look forward to working closely with this administration.
“We need to reinvent leadership, build on mutual trust and mutual accountability to end the pandemic and address the fundamental inequalities that are at the root of many of the world’s problems,” he said.
Tedros addressed the ministerial session of the 194 member states of the WHO that resumed on Monday after a brief meeting last May. Speaking from quarantine after being in contact with an individual with COVID-19 more than a week ago, he began with a minute of silence, noting that COVID-19 cases approached 50 million with 1.2 million deaths.
An oversight panel last week called for reforms at WHO, including “predictable and flexible” funding and the establishment of a multi-tiered system to warn countries of disease outbreaks before they escalate.
Tedros said that the COVID-19 vaccines being developed should be fairly assigned as “global public goods, not private products.”
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