During the last health crisis, the world protected itself in scattered order while the virus crossed borders. As a candidate for UN Secretary-General, President Macky Sall places pandemic preparedness among his priorities.
An alert slower than the virus. When a disease emerges, the speed of the response decides the rest. During the last pandemic, information travelled more slowly than the virus and each state looked first to its own stockpiles. The weeks lost at the start were paid for everywhere afterwards.
Access to vaccines. 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. Yet a world only partly covered prolongs the spread of the disease, including in the best-protected countries.
A global agreement on pandemics. States have adopted at the World Health Organization an agreement on pandemic preparedness, which provides for sharing data, technologies and doses, and for bringing production closer to those who lack it. Its reach will depend on how it is applied, year after year.
Health preparedness at the UN. Without running the World Health Organization, the Secretary-General can place health on the same agenda as security and development. He can also support early warning, on which the speed of the response depends when an epidemic breaks out somewhere.
Experience in government. Preparing for a pandemic starts with states, and President Macky Sall led one for twelve years and chaired the African Union in 2022. That experience explains why the vision statement filed with the United Nations frames its proposals as obligations, among them a renewed multilateralism and 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