UK prime minister Boris Johnson, German chancellor Angela Merkel, and French president Emmanuel Macron are the leading figures behind the pledge, with 21 other heads of state signing the letter.
It states that “nobody is safe until everyone is safe,” and that a “global community” must be further implemented in order to combat ‘inevitable’ future pandemics.
“At a time when Covid-19 has exploited our weaknesses and divisions, we must seize this opportunity and come together as a global community for peaceful cooperation that extends beyond this crisis,” the letter states.
“Building our capacities and systems to do this will take time and require a sustained political, financial and societal commitmentover many years,” it adds.
The letter compares the situation to the aftermath of the Second World War, and urges an end to “isolationism and nationalism”.
The pledge calls for a strengthening of the World Health Organisation’s infrastructure, despite the global health body’s documented failures in regards to the pandemic, and continued charges that it has facilitated the communist Chinese government’s lies and deceptions.
WHO director general Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus also signed the letter, having repeatedly slammed nations including Britain and the US for putting their own populations first when it comes to recovery.
The letter specifically calls for a global treaty on pandemics to be signed to establish international ‘rules and norms’ for vaccine production and distribution, as well as coordination on ‘alert systems, data-sharing and research’.
Presumably any global treaty would also address restrictions to be put in place under future pandemics, although that is not made clear in the letter.
Today, we hold the same hope that as we fight to overcome the Covid-19 pandemic together, we can build a more robust international health architecture that will protect future generations. There will be other pandemics and other major health emergencies. No single government or multilateral agency can address this threat alone. The question is not if, but when. Together, we must be better prepared to predict, prevent, detect, assess and effectively respond to pandemics in a highly coordinated fashion. The Covid-19 pandemic has been a stark and painful reminder that nobody is safe until everyone is safe.
Boris Johnson, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom; Emmanuel Macron, president of France; Angela Merkel, chancellor of Germany; Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the World Health Organisation and 21 other world leaders.
Health ministers of nations are set to meet in May at the World Health Assembly, and could discuss a global treaty there.
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