Members of the EP Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety (ENVI) have an exchange of views with the World Health Organization (WHO) on the European Union Health Union package and the WHO’s global response to the pandemic. Presentation by Jaouad MAHJOUR, Assistant Director-General, Emergency Preparedness and International Health Regulations at World Health Organization and statements by Sylvie BRIAND, Director of the Global Infectious Hazard Preparedness (GIH), WHO Emergency Preparedness (WPE) and by Nedret EMIROGLU, Director, Country Readiness Strengthening. The transcription of the speeches is the result of an automatic process. Check against delivery.

Brussels

exchange of views

meeting

Committee on Environment, Public Health and Food Safety

healthcare safety (T)

World Health Organisation

CANFIN, Pascal (Renew, FR)

Coronavirus outbreak (T)

EU4Health Programme 2021-2027 (T)

vaccination strategy (T)

The European Union Health Union package and the WHO’s global response to the pandemic: opening, presentation and exchange of views with the World Health Organization (recorded)

SOUNDBITE (Original), Pascal CANFIN (Renew,FR), chair, So we can move now to the next agenda item, we have just been joined by the team of WHO, the next agenda item, as you know, is the exchange of views with the WHO team on the European Union health package and of course, also the policy responses within the E.U. at the EU level and maybe member states as well. So we are going to organise this important debate.

SOUNDBITE (Original), Pascal CANFIN (Renew,FR), chair, First, the floor will be to the WTO and then the coordinators and then the rapporteurs for the text we have just discussed on. And then, the catch the eye. So if you want to put your name on the list, don't hesitate. I will formally now open the catch-the-eye and then we will adjust the slots depending on the number of questions we're going to have.

SOUNDBITE (Original), Pascal CANFIN (Renew,FR), chair, So thank you to the WHO team to be with us this afternoon and to participate to this debate. I will without waiting more, giving you the the floor, Mr. Mahjour, for around 10 minutes.

SOUNDBITE (Original), Jaouad MAHJOUR, Assistant Director-General at World Health Organization, Yeah, thank you very much. Thank you. Was just saying that my name is Jaouad Mahjour and I'm assistant director general for emergency preparedness in WHO and I'm representing our executive director, Dr. Mike Ryan. I have with me in the room, Dr. Sylvie Briand, the director of Global Preparedness, the director of Country Readiness, strengthening and delivering even more of that information management. And we are pleased to contribute to the discussion of today.

SOUNDBITE (Original), Jaouad MAHJOUR, Assistant Director-General at World Health Organization, Again, thank you for the opportunity and also thank you. Thanks to European countries and institutions for the strong support that they're giving to the WHO in general and to the Covid response during this very important crisis. And just to say that we are very proud about our close relationship with the Europe institution like ECDC, EMA and of course, the commissioner of Health and Food Safety.

SOUNDBITE (Original), Jaouad MAHJOUR, Assistant Director-General at World Health Organization, And we are very frequent exchange, very frequent collaboration to align our position and also to share information. We are in the middle of a big crisis and this subject on how to prepare for the next one is in the middle of our attention and our discussion these days. Just to remind ourselves that this crisis so far affected more than 140 million people and three million deaths, which is the biggest health crisis that we have had for many, many years, if not centuries.

SOUNDBITE (Original), Jaouad MAHJOUR, Assistant Director-General at World Health Organization, What we learnt from this this pandemic is the importance of preparedness in general, but also the importance of some key components, some key elements to guide us and help us to take the decision. We know the importance of the epidemiology and having strong capacity at the national and the global level to guide the decision making process. We learnt the importance of surveillance.

SOUNDBITE (Original), Jaouad MAHJOUR, Assistant Director-General at World Health Organization, When is strong to pick up signals in the beginning to respond to them, but also when they are weak and not able to pick signals and to contain them earlier. We also saw the importance of surveillance to detect the variants, and this is a strong concern for the global community these days. We also learnt the importance of having that system resilient to cope with the number of cases in ICU and hospitals and capable to deliver health care services.

SOUNDBITE (Original), Jaouad MAHJOUR, Assistant Director-General at World Health Organization, And we also learnt the importance of science. Science to come up with solutions. So the science community in the world, were very efficient to quickly come up with the solution to the problem, including the vaccine in six months. And this needs to be further strengthened and to work during the peace time and not only on responding.

SOUNDBITE (Original), Jaouad MAHJOUR, Assistant Director-General at World Health Organization, We also learnt the importance of coming up with the good news and the right information to the public to help them to understand. We also learnt the importance of social measures and public health measures in delaying the spread of disease, but also protecting economies and social behaviours. We also understood the importance of country being prepared, and we saw it: some countries were prepared much better than others.

SOUNDBITE (Original), Jaouad MAHJOUR, Assistant Director-General at World Health Organization, But we also learnt that if one country were seen as well prepared, they didn't cope with the scale of the pandemic. And preparedness at the national level should be looked at in the way that we are measuring it, but also in the way that we are dealing with it. We also learnt the importance of global supply to provide goods to the countries and to come up with a firm mechanism on equitable access to goods, or these days the vaccine.

SOUNDBITE (Original), Jaouad MAHJOUR, Assistant Director-General at World Health Organization, And last but not least, we saw the importance of communities. Not only individuals implement instruction, but civil society was very active in planning, but also in contributing to convince people to take the right measures. These are the lessons learnt that are extremely important to look to the future and to prepare for the next pandemic. Because all expert and specialists think that we will have another pandemic.

SOUNDBITE (Original), Jaouad MAHJOUR, Assistant Director-General at World Health Organization, The problem is not if, but when, and we need to be prepared for it. So far, the indication that we have is that countries are not fully prepared to deal with health emergencies in general and pandemic in particular. We think, in WHO, that to prepare for the next pandemic, we need to focus on three major areas.

SOUNDBITE (Original), Jaouad MAHJOUR, Assistant Director-General at World Health Organization, The first one is country preparedness, national preparedness and response to strengthen and maintain national capacities and public health capacities so they are functional when emergency occur. Second, we think that we need sustainable and predictable funding for emergency preparedness and response at the national level from domestic resources, but also at the global level to allow the global community to come together to face the global threats.

SOUNDBITE (Original), Jaouad MAHJOUR, Assistant Director-General at World Health Organization, And we also need a global preparedness and global preparedness mechanism that be strengthened and established during the time, but also to be activated when the response starts to be efficient and I will come back to that. And of course, we learnt that to prepare for the next pandemic, we need stronger WHO to work closely with our partners.

SOUNDBITE (Original), Jaouad MAHJOUR, Assistant Director-General at World Health Organization, Partners, member states, of course, but also other partners like a multilateral agency or an agency, other stakeholders and including the WHO network. And I will mention here a few of them who were very efficient with us. One of them the Global Alert and the Response Network, the group of the international the National Republicans goods, and of course, the EMT, the emergency medical teams who are a very big asset for the WHO to support countries who want to deal with emergencies.

SOUNDBITE (Original), Jaouad MAHJOUR, Assistant Director-General at World Health Organization, Coming back to the national preparedness. What we learnt from the covid is what is needed is strong governance, strong leadership and community readiness. What are the key pillars for any preparedness to future crises, a future pandemic and of course, coordination mechanism to bring all this together in a very efficient way. And we saw it in the covid.

SOUNDBITE (Original), Jaouad MAHJOUR, Assistant Director-General at World Health Organization, In some countries, for example, would they have greater autonomy at the province level, we saw some discrepancies between the national and provincial level. For the global preparedness, we need to focus on the key issues, which are extremely important. The first one is to enhance the global early warning and a system, of course, led by WHO, but in strong collaboration with other partners like the ECDC, for example.

SOUNDBITE (Original), Jaouad MAHJOUR, Assistant Director-General at World Health Organization, We need a global emergency supply that resilient and be strengthened and reinforced during the peace time and the countries supply the countries. We need a global emergency work force with all the workforce, the global workforce together to join an effort to respond to crises and to contain them at the beginning and to prevent any pandemic.

SOUNDBITE (Original), Jaouad MAHJOUR, Assistant Director-General at World Health Organization, We need also to sustain the research and development assets that we have around WHO our research and development plan, bringing all stakeholders to collaborate not only to respond to, but to prevent. To work on vaccine, to prevent some disease or some control measures and some medicines to prevent diseases not to become a pandemic. We need also to look for a mechanism to share pathogens and to share viruses.

SOUNDBITE (Original), Jaouad MAHJOUR, Assistant Director-General at World Health Organization, And we saw that what is extremely important, including genomes and and genomic sequences, our director general took an initiative establishing a bio hub on a voluntary basis with some countries to share this material and to give them to scientific institution to start to research and also to come up with a solution to the pandemic. We need also stronger mechanism around the world to manage misinformation and disinformation.

SOUNDBITE (Original), Jaouad MAHJOUR, Assistant Director-General at World Health Organization, And of course, as I said, predictable and sustainable funding is extremely important. This is why 26 heads of state recently came up with an appeal or a call for international treaty to prevent and respond to pandemic. And this appeal, or op-ed was signed also with our director general and of course, President Charles Michel, from which the idea came in the beginning.

SOUNDBITE (Original), Jaouad MAHJOUR, Assistant Director-General at World Health Organization, And this initiative now is taken in Geneva by the ambassador of these twenty six countries signatories and are coming up to the next assembly in May 24. To propose a decision to give the mandate of WHO to work on this global treaty, but also to set the coordination and mechanism and timeline for this process.

SOUNDBITE (Original), Jaouad MAHJOUR, Assistant Director-General at World Health Organization, Of course, the next assembly, our assembly will be extremely important because during this assembly, a truly independent panel will present their conclusion to the member states for this for their consideration. The first one is the IHR committee. And this committee looks at the functioning of the actual covid, as in bringing a set of recommendations to make better the implementation of IHR and also a recommendation on how to to make IHR, which is the only legally binding instrument for preparing a response in terms of help to make it more efficient on the field and increase compliance.

SOUNDBITE (Original), Jaouad MAHJOUR, Assistant Director-General at World Health Organization, The second panel is the IPPR, the Independent Preparedness Panel Review, which looked to the overall functioning of the overall response to covid and will come up with some recommendation. And the last one is the IOACD, the Independent Oversight Advisory Committee, who look to the WHO work in emergency and also come up with a recommendation.

SOUNDBITE (Original), Jaouad MAHJOUR, Assistant Director-General at World Health Organization, The next assembly in May, our member states will have a set of recommendations from the panels. Will have an idea on a decision to take on the treaty. And we hope that assembly is the starting point for a greater commitment and political commitment to prevent and better response to future crises and pandemic in particular. I will stop here and of course, we'll be happy to contribute to the discussion. My colleagues and I are ready to do so.