Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the World Health Organisation, debate the current pandemic with the Committee on Environment, Public Health and Food Safety, in the European Parliament in Brussels. It is the first time he appears in the European Parliament in this legislature.

COVID-19: extracts from the exchange of views with Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director General

https://api.multimedia.europarl.europa.eu/documents/20125/6156415/I192306Chapters%5BSD-EN%5D.srt

Title: COVID-19: extracts from the exchange of views with Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director General (I-192306)

Interior, meeting room total view, European Parliament, Brussels, Belgium (1 shot) 

SOUNDBITE (English), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director General, This is much more than a health crisis. The economic, social and political effects will be felt for years to come.

SOUNDBITE (English), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director General, The pandemic is teaching us that health and health security are not luxury items. They are the foundation of sustainable development, stability and prosperity. Ultimately, health is not a cost, i's an investment.

SOUNDBITE (English), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director General, The plan is for the post COVID-19 recovery and to reduce the risk of future epidemics must go further upstream than early detection and control of disease outbreaks. They must also lessen our impact on the environment to reduce risk at the source. As I said at the World Health Assembly, any efforts to make our world safer are doomed unless they address that critical interface between people and pathogens and the existential threat of climate change that's making our earth less habitable.

SOUNDBITE (English), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director General, We continue to look to you for leadership and support, especially for countries in Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific. Thank you for a generosity so far, and I hope your support will continue.

SOUNDBITE (English), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director General, The EU is in a unique position to provide global leadership in defining the 'new normal't as part of the global recovery. We look to you to lead the way in building back better and building back greener by also strengthening your Union.

SOUNDBITE (English), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director General, If we find a medicine, a vaccine, it has to be a global public good, but this should be a consensus of the whole world. Of course, a good number of leaders have said that,but it should be a consensus because without a consensus of the whole world that this thing cannot work. Actually, some of the things we are seeing now is some countries are going into having some mechanisms that favours them and that may undermine the global access or making this vaccine a global public good. So there should be a real political commitment.

SOUNDBITE (English), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director General, The amount may not be big enough to give it to everybody. So the other option would be to have the vaccine available to all vulnerable people in the whole world has been.

COVID-19: extracts from the exchange of views with Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director General

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