Four decades ago, we introduced a standard way of encoding digital sound. Its first ever upgrade could lead to new genres of music and ways of experiencing sound
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Heads of state and global health leaders today made an unprecedented commitment to work together to accelerate the development and production of new vaccines, tests and treatments for COVID-19 and assure equitable access worldwide.
The COVID-19 pandemic has already affected more than 2.4 million people, killing over 160,000. It is taking a huge toll on families, societies, health systems and economies around the world, and for as long as this virus threatens any country, the entire world is at risk.
There is an urgent need, therefore, while following existing measures to keep people physically distanced and to test and track all contacts of people who test positive, for innovative COVID-19 vaccines, diagnostics and treatments.
“We will only halt COVID-19 through solidarity,” said Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General. “Countries, health partners, manufacturers, and the private sector must act together and ensure that the fruits of science and research can benefit everybody.”
Work has already started. Since January, WHO has been working with researchers from hundreds of institutions to develop and test vaccines, standardize assays and standardize regulatory approaches on innovative trial designs and define criteria to prioritize vaccine candidates. The Organization has prequalified diagnostics that are being used all over the world, and more are in the pipeline. And it is coordinating a global trial to assess the safety and efficacy of four therapeutics against COVID-19.
The challenge is to speed up and harmonize processes to ensure that once products are deemed safe and effective, they can be brought to the billions of people in the world who need them. Past experience, in the early days of HIV treatment, for example, and in the deployment of vaccines against the H1N1 outbreak in 2009, shows that even when tools are available, they have not been equally available to all.
So today leaders came together at a virtual event, co-hosted by the World Health Organization, the President of France, the President of the European Commission, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The event was joined by the UN Secretary General, the AU Commission Chairperson, the G20 President, heads of state of France, South Africa, Germany, Vietnam, Costa Rica, Italy, Rwanda, Norway, Spain, Malaysia and the UK (represented by the First Secretary of State).
Health leaders from the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), GAVI-the Vaccine Alliance, the Global Fund, UNITAID, the Wellcome Trust, the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement (IFRC), the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers (IFPMA), the Developing Countries Vaccine Manufacturers’ Network (DCVMN), and the International Generic and Biosimilar Medicines Association (IGBA) committed to come together, guided by a common vision of a planet protected from human suffering and the devastating social and economic consequences of COVID-19, to launch this groundbreaking collaboration. They are joined by two Special Envoys: Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Gavi Board Chair and Sir Andrew Witty, former CEO of GlaxoSmithKline.
They pledged to work towards equitable global access based on an unprecedented level of partnership. They agreed to create a strong unified voice, to build on past experience and to be accountable to the world, to communities and to one another.
“Our shared commitment is to ensure all people have access to all the tools to prevent, detect, treat and defeat COVID-19,” said Dr Tedros. “No country and no organization can do this alone. The Access to COVID-19 Tools Accelerator brings together the combined power of several organizations to work with speed and scale.”
Health leaders called on the global community and political leaders to support this landmark collaboration and for donors to provide the necessary resources to accelerate achievement of its objectives, capitalizing on the opportunity provided by a forthcoming pledging initiative that starts on 4 May 2020. This initiative, spearheaded by the European Union, aims to mobilize the significant resources needed to accelerate the work towards protecting the world from COVID-19.
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AGAMIC. Unmarried; unmarriageable, sometimes non-sexed.
AGENIC. Lacking in reproductive power; sterile.
AMPHIMIXIS. That form of reproduction which involves the mingling of substance from two individuals so as to effect a mixture of hereditary characteristics. It includes the phenomena of conjugation and fertilization among both unicellular and multicellular organisms.
ANABOLISM. See METABOLISM.
ANAMNESIC. Pertaining to or aiding recollection.
ANEMIC. Deficient in blood; bloodless.
ANTHROPOMORPHISM. The attributing of human characteristics to natural, supernatural, or divine beings.
ANTHROPOMETRY. Science of measurement of the human body.
ARTIFACT. Any artificial product.
APHASIA. Impairment or lose of the ability to understand or use speech.
ASSOCIATIONISM. The psychological theory which regards the laws of association as the fundamental laws of mental action and development.
ATAVISTIC. Pertaining to reversion through the influence of heredity to remote ancestral characteristics.
ATAXIC. Pertaining to inability to coördinate voluntary movements; irregular.
CALAMO-PAPYRUS. Reed papyrus or pen-paper.
CATABOLISM. See METABOLISM.
CATHARSIS. Purgation or cleansing. Aristotle’s esthetic theory that little renders immune for much.
CEREBRATION. Brain action, conscious or unconscious.
CHOREA. St. Vitus’s dance; a nervous disease marked by irregular and involuntary movements of the limbs and face.
CHRESTOMATHY. A collection of extracts and choice pieces.
CHRISTENTHUM. The Christian belief; the spirit of Christianity.
COMMANDO EXERCISES. Gymnastic exercises whose order is dependent upon the spoken command of the director.
CORTEX. The gray matter of the brain, mostly on its surface.
CORTICAL. Pertaining to the cortex.
CRANIOMETRY. The measurement of skulls.
CRYPTOGAMOUS. Having an obscure mode of fertilization; or, of plants that do not blossom.
CULTUS. A system of religious belief and worship.
DEUTSCHENTHUM. The spirit of the German people.
DIATHESIS. A constitutional predisposition.
EPHEBIC. Pertaining to the Greek system of instruction given to young men to fit them for citizenship; adolescent.
EPIGONI. Successors; followers who only follow.
EPISTEMOLOGY. The theory of knowledge; that branch of logic which undertakes to explain how knowledge is possible and to define its limitations, meaning, and worth.
EUPEPTIC. Having good digestion.
EUPHORIA. The sense of well-being; of fullness of life.
EVIRATION. Emasculation; loss of manly characteristics.
FERAL. Wild by nature; untamed; undomesticated.
FORMICARY. An artificial ants’ nest.
GEMÜTH. Disposition; the entire affective soul and its habitual state.
HEBETUDE. Dullness; stupidity.
HEDONISTIC. Relating to hedonism, that form of Greek philosophy which taught that pleasure is the chief end of existence.
HETAERA. A Greek courtesan. This class was often highly trained in music and social art, and represented the highest grade of culture among Greek women.
HETEROGENY. (1) The spontaneous generation of animals and vegetables, low in the scale of organization, from inorganic elements. (2) That kind of generation in which the parent, whether plant or animal, produces offspring differing in structure or habit from itself, but in which after one or more generations the original form reappears.
HETERONOMOUS. Having a different name.
HOROLOGY. The science of measuring time and of constructing instruments for that purpose.
HYGEIA. The Greek goddess of health; health.
HYPERMETHODIC. Methodic to excess; overmethodic.
HYPERTROPHY. Excessive growth.
INDISCERPTIBLE. Incapable of being destroyed by separation of parts.
INHIBITION. Interference with the normal result of a nervous excitement by an opposing force.
IRRADIATION. The diffusion of nervous stimuli out of the path of normal discharge which, as a result of the excitation of a peripheral end organ may excite other central organs than those directly connected with it.
KINESOLOGICAL. Pertaining to the science of tests and measurements of bodily strength.
KINESOMETER. An instrument for measuring muscular strength.
MEDULLATION. The investment of nerve fibers with a protective covering or medullary sheath, consisting of white, fat-like matter.
MERISTIC. Pertaining to the levels or spinal and cerebral segments of the body.
METABOLISM. The act or process by which, on the one hand, dead food is built up into living matter—anabolism, and by which, on the other, the living matter is broken down into simpler products within a cell or organism—catabolism.
METAMORPHOSIS. Change of form or structure; transformation.
METEMPSYCHOSIS. The doctrine of the transmigration of the soul from one body to another.
MONOPHRASTIC. Pertaining to or consisting of a single phrase.
MONOTECHNIC. Pertaining to a single art or craft.
MORPHOLOGY. The science of form and structure of plants and animals without regard to function.
MYOLOGY. The scientific knowledge of the muscular system.
MYTHOPOEIC. Producing or having a tendency to produce myths.
NOETIC. Of, pertaining to, or conceived by, mind.
NUANCE. Slight shade; difference; distinction; degree.
ORTHOGENIC. Pertaining to right beginning and development.
ORTHOPEDIC. Relating to the art of curing deformities.
OSSUARY. A depository of dry bones.
PALEOPSYCHIC. Pertaining to the antiquity of the soul.
PANTHEISTIC. Relating to that doctrine which holds that the entire phenomenal universe, including man and nature, is the ever-changing manifestation of God, who rises to self-consciousness and personality only in man.
PATRISTICS. That department of study occupied with the doctrines and writings of the fathers of the Christian Church.
PHOBIA. Excessive or morbid fear of anything.
PHYLETICALLY. In accordance with the phylum or race; racially.
PHYLETIC. Pertaining to a race or clan.
PHYLOGENY. The history of the evolution of a species or group; tribal history; ancestral development as opposed to ontogeny or the development of the individual.
PHYLUM. A term introduced by Haeckel to designate the great branches of the animal and vegetable kingdoms. Each phylum may include several classes.
PICKELHAUBE. The spiked helmet of the German army.
PLANKTON. Sea animals and plants collectively; distinguished from coast or bottom forms and floating in a great mass.
POLYGAMIC (LOVE). Pertaining to the habit of having more than one mate of the opposite sex.
POLYPHRASTIC. Having many phrases; pertaining to rambling, incoherent speech.
POST-SIMIAN. Pertaining to an age later than that in which simian or monkey-like forms prevailed.
PRENUBILE. Pertaining to the age before sexual maturity or marriageability is reached.
PRIE DIEU. A praying desk.
PROPEDEUTIC. Preliminary; introductory.
PROPHYLACTIC. Any medicine or measure efficacious in preventing disease.
PSEUDOPHOBIAC. Pertaining to a morbid condition in which the subject is continually in fear of having said something not strictly true.
PSYCHOGENESIS. The origin and development of soul.
PSYCHONOMIC. Pertaining to the laws of mind.
PSYCHOSIS. Mental constitution or condition; any change in consciousness, especially if abnormal.
PUBERTY. The age of sexual maturity.
PUBESCENT. Relating to the dawning of puberty.
PYGMOID. Of pygmy size and form.
RABULIST. A chronic wrangler; one who argues about everything.
SCHEMA. A synopsis; a summary. In the Kantian sense, a general type.
SCHEMATISM. An outline of any systematic arrangement; an outline.
SUPERFOETATION. A second conception some time after a prior one, by which two foetuses of different age exist together in the same female. Often used figuratively.
TEMIBILITY. (From Italian temibile, to be feared.) The principle of adjustment of penalty to crime in just that degree necessary to prevent a repetition of the criminal act.
TIC. A nervous affection of the muscles; a twitching.
TRANSCENDENTAL. In the Kantian system having an a priori character, transcending experience, presupposed in and necessary to experience.
TRAUMATA. Wounds.
TRAUMATISM. A wound; any morbid condition produced by wounds or other external violence.
VERBIGERATION. The continual utterance of certain words or phrases at short intervals, without reference to their meaning, as seen in insane Gedankenflucht or rapid flight of thought.
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