The World Health Organization’s annual oversight convention will be held by teleconference beginning Monday, as the worst pandemic in modern history
The World Health Organization’s annual oversight convention will be held by teleconference beginning Monday, as the worst pandemic in modern history continues around the globe.
The 73rd annual World Health Assembly typically brings together representatives from the WHO’s 194 member states in Geneva to discuss a wide range of health topics. However, this year’s meeting will be held by teleconference for the first-time ever. It will also be much more focused — on the novel coronavirus that’s infected more than 4.5 million people, killed 300,000, crashed the global economy and shows no sign of going away on its own.
„It’s probably the most important assembly in their history,“ says Paul O’Brien, vice president of policy and advocacy for Oxfam America.
„We have a global pandemic. We have half a billion people atrisk of falling into poverty. And we need the World Health Assembly to come up with the core solutions. And that is getting a vaccine out, manufactured, distributed and freely available to everyone as soon as possible,“ he says.
Oxfam America is part of a global effort for what the organization calls the „People’s Vaccine.“ The goal is to get countries to work together to rapidly produce a vaccine and agree to make it universally available.
The issue of an inoculation against COVID-19 is expected to dominate the WHO’s assembly. But O’Brien isn’t convinced that the WHA will reach an agreement on one.
