U.S. intent on resuming major role in global health
The United States’ top medical official said that the US will now join the World Health Organization’s (WHO) global initiative to help poorer nations overcome Covid-19, in addition to a raft of new measures in support of access to universal health care, such as abortion services.
Addressing the WHO’s Executive Board Meeting, Dr. Anthony Fauci, Chief Medical Adviser to new US President Joe Biden, said that he intended to issue a directive within hours so that the country can become part of the COVAX platform to advance multilateral efforts to distribute coronavirus vaccines, therapeutics and diagnostics.
Speaking one year ago “to the day” since the United States confirmed its first case of Covid-19 infection, Dr. Fauci noted that global infections had now surpassed 90 million.
This was a “devastating number that continues to grow,” he said, while paying tribute to the scientists, public health officials and frontline healthcare workers, and community health workers who had worked “heroically” to fight the virus.
They had developed medical countermeasures “at truly phenomenal speed, adapting their responses as more is known about the virus, he said, “courageously treating the millions of people who have been stricken by this historic scourge.”
Fauci noted that responding to Covid-19 and “rebuilding global health and advancing health security” worldwide, “will not be easy.”
He said the US was “committed to transparency, including those events surrounding the early days of the pandemic. It is imperative that we learn and build upon important lessons about how future pandemic events can be averted,” he added. “The international investigation should be robust and clear, and we look forward to evaluating it.”
Addressing the WHO executive, Fauci also announced US plans to work with other countries “to counter the erosion of major gains in global health,” specifying HIV/ AIDS, food security, malaria and epidemic preparedness.
“It will be our policy to support women’s and girls’ sexual and reproductive health and reproductive rights in the United States, as well as globally,” the US official added.