DEADLY outbreaks like the Ebola epidemic raging in the Democratic Republic of Congo show the urgent need to complete an international pandemic treaty, the World Health Organization chief said Monday. Wealthy countries and developing nations remain at loggerheads over how an agreement, adopted last year as a framework to handle future Covid-like pandemics, will work in practice. As the ninth meeting towards finalizing the deal opened in Geneva Monday, WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus called on countries to “finish the job”.
Pointing to several recent deadly disease outbreaks, he stressed that completing a pandemic treaty was “about protecting people”. “A pathogen threat anywhere can become a threat everywhere, to people of every country,” he said, according to a written version of his statement.
“The outbreak of hantavirus earlier this year, and the ongoing Ebola epidemic in DRC remind us of this threat.” He was referring to the hantavirus outbreak that killed three people on a cruise ship in April and the latest Ebola outbreak, declared in May, which has killed nearly 5,000 people out of more than 10,000 infected mostly in the DRC.
AFP
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