Geneva, Switzerland
Reuters
The head of the World Health Organization called on Monday for launching negotiations this year on an international treaty to boost pandemic preparedness, as part of sweeping reforms envisioned by member states.
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO director-general, told its annual ministerial assembly that the UN agency faced a “serious challenge” to maintain its COVID-19 response at the current level and required sustainable and flexible funding.
Family members carry the coffin of a man who died of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) at a cemetery, in Lima, Peru, on 27th January. PICTURE: Reuters/Angela Ponce/File photo.
PERU REVISES PANDEMIC DEATH TOLL, NOW WORST IN THE WORLD PER CAPITA
Peru on Monday almost tripled its official COVID-19 death toll to 180,764, following a government review, making it the country with the worst death rate per capita, according to Johns Hopkins University data.
Peru has been among the hardest hit Latin America countries during the COVID-19 pandemic, with its hospitals overcrowded with patients and demand for oxygen outstripping availability. Experts had long warned that the true death toll was being undercounted in official statistics.
The government said it will now update its death count, which stood at 69,342 as of Sunday, in part because of a lack of testing that made it difficult to confirm whether a person had died due to the virus or some other cause.
According to Johns Hopkins data, Hungary had the worst number of per capita COVID-19 deaths at about 300 per 100,000 people. With its updated death toll, Peru now stands at more than 500 COVID-19 deaths per 100,000 people.
“We think it is our duty to make public this updated information,” said Peru Prime Minister Violeta Bermudez during a news conference announcing the result of the review.
In Latin America, Brazil has the highest total death toll with more than 450,000 lives lost due to the pandemic. Based on population, however, Peru’s per capita death toll now more than doubles that of Brazil, according to the data.
Peru’s updated numbers are in line with so-called excess death figures, which researchers have used in Peru and other countries to measure possible undercounting during the pandemic.
Excess deaths measures the total number of deaths over a period of time and compares it with the same period pre-pandemic.
– MARCELO ROCHABRUN and MARCO AQUINO, Reuters
Earlier in the day – the last of the week-long assembly – health ministers agreed to study recommendations for ambitious reforms made by independent experts to strengthen the capacity of both the WHO and countries to contain new viruses.
The ministers from the WHO’s 194 member states are to meet from 29th November to decide whether to launch negotiations on the pandemic treaty.
“The one recommendation that I believe will do most to strengthen both WHO and global health security is the recommendation for a treaty on pandemic preparedness and response,” Tedros said. “This is an idea whose time has come.”
It could be a long road ahead if such a treaty is to be reached. The WHO’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control – the world’s first public health treaty – was clinched in 2003 after four years of negotiations.
The WHO, which has been at the heart of the world’s sluggish response to the COVID-19 pandemic, faces a potential shake-up to prevent future outbreaks.
Under the resolution submitted by the European Union, and adopted by consensus, member states are to be firmly in the driver’s seat of the reforms through a year-long process.
“It’s essential that we strengthen global [disease] surveillance and provide the World Health Organization with the authority and the capacity to do this important job for all the peoples of the world,” Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison told the talks.
“If we are to deliver on this ambitious reform agenda, then we must work together and put other issues aside,” he said.
The new virus has infected more than 170 million people and killed nearly 3.7 million since emerging in China in late 2019, according to a Reuters tally of official national figures.
“Pathogens have the upper hand”
WHO’s emergencies director, Mike Ryan, welcomed the decisions, saying: “Right now the pathogens have the upper hand, they are emerging more frequently and often silently in a planet that is out of balance.
“We need to turn that very thing that has exposed us in this pandemic, our interconnectedness, we need to turn that into a strength,” he said.
Chile’s ambassador Frank Tressler Zamorano said on behalf of 60 countries that a pandemic treaty would help “heed the call by so many experts to reset the system”.
One panel, headed by former New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark and Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, a former President of Liberia, said a new global system should be set up to respond faster to disease outbreaks to help ensure no future virus causes a pandemic as devastating as COVID-19.
The experts, who found crucial failures in the global response in early 2020, said the WHO should be given the power to send investigators swiftly to chase down new disease outbreaks and to publish their full findings without delay.
– Additional reporting by EMMA FARGE
