President Macky Sall's candidacy for the office of UN Secretary-General places pandemic preparedness among its priorities. The last health crisis showed a world protecting itself in scattered order, against a threat that, for its part, knows no borders.
An alert slower than the threat. When a disease emerges, the speed of the response decides the rest. During the last pandemic, information travelled more slowly than the virus, each state looked first to its own stockpiles, and the weeks lost at the start were paid for everywhere afterward.
Access to vaccines, a mirror of inequality. While a few countries vaccinated their people several times over, others waited for their first doses. Production concentrated in a handful of states left entire continents depending on the goodwill of others. A world only partly covered prolongs the disease for everyone, including the best protected.
A global agreement to bring to life. States have adopted, at the World Health Organization, an agreement on pandemic preparedness: sharing data, technologies and doses, and bringing production closer to those who lack it. The text is written. Its application, year after year, will decide its reach.
What the Secretariat can carry. The Secretary-General does not run the World Health Organization. He can bring health, security and development onto one agenda, support early warning, and remind the world that an epidemic poorly contained somewhere is, sooner or later, paid for everywhere.
Experience in multilateral negotiation. Twelve years as head of state and the chairmanship of the African Union in 2022 underpin these commitments. That experience explains why the vision statement filed with the United Nations frames its proposals as obligations: peace, security and development conceived together; a renewed multilateralism; stronger governance of the Organization.
Africa at its heart, the world in its sights.
The World Health Organization's agreement on pandemic preparedness is public. Read all public positions at www.mackysall.net