Geneva: Stressing that pandemic preparedness is a constant, long-term investment, the World Health Organization Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus today called for making longer-term investments in research capabilities around the globe, “to prepare us for future viruses and other health threats”.
In his opening remarks at the COVID-19 Global Research & Innovation Forum today, Dr Ghebreyesus said today, when the Intergovernmental Negotiating Body is holding its first meeting at WHO to discuss a new global accord on pandemic preparedness and response, “we cannot make the world safer without investments in science, research and innovation”.
“Just over two years ago, as the world was still coming to grips with the spread of this novel coronavirus, WHO did what only WHO can do – we brought scientists together from around the world to identify the most urgent priorities for research and development,” he said. He noted that it was “incredible to think that at the time, there were just over 1,000 reported deaths in China, and only one reported death in the rest of the world. 24 months later, and almost 6 million people have lost their lives”.
The WHO D-G described the COVID-19 pandemic as a global health crisis “unlike any that any of us have experienced in our lifetimes”. He said by embedding research at the heart of the pandemic response, two goals could be achieved: “to help us end the acute phase of the current pandemic, and to protect us from the epidemics and pandemics of the future”.
He said it was vital that the research efforts now focus not only on the current variants of concern but also to understand how the virus was evolving so that these research efforts could “help us with whatever may come”.
Dr Ghebreyesus said it was critical to support and develop the capacity of research institutions and researchers in low- and middle-income countries. He pointed out that WHO and partners had maintained a network of global researchers and experts that had produced a Global Research Roadmap to focus research efforts on COVID-19, debate research priorities, develop methods and critically appraise emerging evidence. This effort involves hundreds of virtual scientific consultations with thousands of scientists around the world, he said.
“These global research efforts have filled in many of the key knowledge gaps around COVID-19 identified in the roadmap, including the epidemiological behaviour of the virus, supporting the development of safe and effective vaccines in record time, and evaluating potential therapeutics. This rapid scale-up and coordination of research were facilitated by work over years by WHO’s Research and Development Blueprint for Epidemics, which was established after the West African Ebola epidemic to identify and stimulate research and development for high-risk pathogens,” he said. According to him, scaling up the collective efforts quickly during this pandemic was possible because “we were already collaborating globally on shared priorities”.
He said this was the essence of collaborative foresight and collective preparedness that was needed in future.
“WHO’s global coordination and support for the world’s leading scientists and researchers from almost every country does not always grab the media headlines. But it has been key in underpinning the important initiatives and breakthroughs that will be presented today. These processes and platforms will be the foundation for the research response for future epidemics, pandemics and other global health emergencies,” he said.
– global bihari bureau
