NEW YORK, JULY 28 – Strengthening the current global health architecture, starting from the WHO, is of the utmost importance, including with regard to a potential new Pandemic Treaty, Ambassador Maurizio Massari, said in his first address as Italian Permanent Representative to the United Nations in New York.
Massari spoke to a General Assembly informal plenary meeting convened to allow the Independent Panel for Preparedness and Response (IPPPR) to brief the membership on their findings and recommendations contained in their final report. Last May the 194 WHO State Members agreed to discuss such a Treaty during a special session to be held next November.
“Over the last year and a half, strengthening global health security has become a key, global priority and multilateral action is our most effective tool to address such priority”, said Massari recalling that Italy has placed “Global Health and Pandemic Preparedness and Response” at the center of its G20 Presidency.
“We have proactively engaged to facilitate consensus-and-evidence-based solutions for strengthening global health architecture and pandemic preparedness and response, facilitating dialogues and advancing coordinated actions in relevant fora, including here in New York and in Geneva”, said the Ambassador, pointing to a full set of initiatives, including advancing the equitable and global access to COVID-19 vaccines and ensuring the full support to the ACT-Accelerator and the Covax Facility, but also supporting the inter-connected processes through the Global Health Summit’s “Rome Declaration” which laid the foundations of key principles for pandemic preparedness and response.
During the Summit, Italy announced an additional 300 million euro contribution to the Covax Facility and the dose sharing of 15 million vaccines as part of the EU-vaccine-doses scheme.
Earlier this month in Venice, the G20 Members received the report of the “High Level Independent Panel on Financing Global Commons for Pandemic Preparedness and Response”, launched last February. As an immediate follow-up, G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors, who recently met in Venice, highlighted “the urgent need to be better prepared for future health threats” and committed to work with relevant partners, including the WHO and the International Financial Institutions (IFIs), and agreed “to develop proposals for sustainable financing to strengthen future pandemic preparedness and response, and to improve international governance and coordination between global health and finance policy makers”.
The G20 will continue to be highly engaged in this area of work, in view of the G20 Health Ministerial, next September, the Joint Finance and Health Ministers’ Ministerial Meeting, next October, and the G20 Leaders Summit, at the end of October, in Rome. (@OnuItalia)
