Chair:
Michel Kazatchkine, Special Advisor to the World Health Organization Regional Office for Europe
Speakers:
Antoine Flahault, Director of the Institute of Global Health at the University of Geneva, Director of the Swiss School of Public Health
Els Torreele, Visiting Policy Fellow at the UCL Institute for Innovation & Public Purpose in London
Maha Barakat, Assistant Minister for Health and Life Sciences at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the UAE
Haruka Sakamoto, Primary care physician and Senior Fellow at the Tokyo Foundation for Policy Research
Jacques Biot, board member and Advisor to companies in the field of digital transformation and artificial intelligence, former member of the executive committee of Roussel-Uclaf and Pasteur Mérieux Serums and Vaccines
Watch the full session: https://youtu.be/OS2O1CLkFg4?si=oC4uwCH3i0IXzTwT
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[Music] [Applause] so good morning everyone um and welcome to this session on global health and pandemics this is the fourth time we have a session on pandemics uh the first one was a virtual session in 2020 you may remember uh before anything I’d like to thank tiid mbal thank you Madame Quan for inviting us uh and uh Madame Minister thank warmly thank uh the government of the UAE for the wonderful welcome and hosting this conference um we have a an excellent panel of speakers today with broad expertise in global health and geopolitics uh but before we start i’ I’d like to show one slide for everyone to remember about key figures on covid-19 as the political attention and the public opinion attention is rapidly waning what people often call the cycle of panic and neglect we are actually in a phase of neglect um and that’s why I entitled the slide covid-19 are we being dismissive so let’s not forget that the covid-19 pandemic has been the worst combined health and socioeconomic crisis in living memory it has infected at least 250 million people across the globe and the global death tour is estimated to be 27 between 18 and 33 million people at the highest point of the pandemic 9 % of school children across the world were unable to attend school at least 150 million people have been pushed to extreme poverty and the economic cost has been huge estimated by the IMF at being 14 trillion dollar to be lost in the period 2024 the toughest shock to the global economy since World War II and the last point on the slide is that the pandemic is not over and it continues to have a profound impact on the lives and livelihoods for many people millions of people with what we call long covid but also as the economic recovery whereas it somehow is taking place in the high income count countries it still is very slow in recovery in the poorest countries so we’ll discuss today about where we are with the pandemic and which are the perspectives uh of preparing ourselves to a next pandemic and the question that is posed today is are we ready for a next pandemic now