Perception is so important in dealing with other people in any aspect of human experience. In the field of internet marketing this is especially true. Your website visitors, subscribers and customers should perceive you as someone they can believe in; someone they can trust. To this end it is so important to always ensure that the information you provide is accurate and honest. Even if you are not the greatest expert on a topic your customers should perceive you as a source of reliable and valuable information. Never claim to be something you are not but by offering quality your subscribers and customers will consider you to be someone they can comfortably deal with.
A good starting point is to establish yourself in a particular niche. At a later date you may well wish to expand your business into other fields, but I would recommend that you operate in just one subject area to start with. The more specialized your chosen niche is, the easier it will be to promote yourself as the 'go-to' person. If the niche you choose is one where you already have an in-depth knowledge then you are in a very strong position to market within that niche. You can genuinely portray yourself as an expert by way of autobiographical notes added to your website, articles or sales pages.
If you do not have that level of expertise, concentrate on learning as much as possible about your niche through research and study. Immerse yourself in all aspects of the niche so you do become, at least, something of an expert, able to answer queries and give a genuine aura of knowledge which will go down very well with your customers. It has been said that the definition of an expert in any field is someone who knows more than you do. Any newly qualified teacher will tell you how, from time-to-time, they manage to stay just one lesson ahead of their students.
There have been libraries full of advice about how to select an ideal niche so I am not going to cover that here. You will find that information very, very easily via your search engine, but one piece of general advice would be to find a topic which has a significant following but which has limited coverage on the internet. As always with internet marketing, research is the key. The marketplace is vast so there are seams of gold out there as yet un-mined if you can find them. Go prospecting!
Being seen as an expert by your website visitors will always have a significant positive impact on your business but you do need people to find your website and related copy to be 'suitably impressed'. Finding a profitable niche which is largely undeveloped will make it easier to bring in the traffic as the competition will be much less fierce. Once you have people on your site then, and only then, can you impress them with your expertise, your available information and your products. You might say that these two things go hand-in-hand – traffic and expertise.
As a child it was loads of fun to make Valentines for each member of my class. Valentines are healing in so many ways. I felt the good feeling of making something for someone else.
Looking back on the time, I realize now, Mom was probably just finding projects to keep me and my three sisters busy for a couple of afternoons. We cut and pasted, trimmed and folded. I loved the color pink, so it didn't surprise anyone when all my valentines had more pink on them and that I kinda 'dominated the pink crayon out of the set of crayons us sisters shared.
Mom was careful to have us take a break with hot chocolate and marshmallows out on the porch so we didn't muss up our Valentines and, so we wouldn't get too weary before our mission was accomplished. It was an exciting time of the school year.
Being the youngest of the four, Mom helped my valentines "just a little" so they would be presentable. We lived on a simple budget, so the one package of store bought Valentines purchased had to be shared out between us. Also bought was a box of Valentine candies and we carefully put one candy in each Valentine. I had four store Valentines and twenty-two homemade Valentines when I set out for school the morning of Valentine's Day.
Of course, my teacher would get a store bought Valentine and I had made the biggest homemade one for her too. Then there was my two best friends, Elaine and Joanna. I had made them a homemade Valentine plus a store Valentine. I had one store Valentine left and I couldn't think of one more person to give it to. It was so special.
My teacher had set aside the afternoon for exchanging Valentines. It was difficult for us all to think of school work when so much was going to happen that day. All morning I looked around the room to see someone who would get my last special store Valentine. I talked it over with my two friends and they made suggestions too, but the ones they suggested were more their friends and I was a "tag-along."
Then exchange time came and the energy level of the classroom escalated to a high roar. Notes flying around the room and everyone smiling. I got twenty-four Valentines. Most my Valentines had a candy in them too, so I thought I had a pretty good trade around. Valentines are healing in so many ways and I knew I had many friends.
Through all the excitement, I clear forgot about my last special store Valentine. As I walked from the bus to home, I remembered it. As I rounded the last corner, there was Daddy's car parked in the driveway. The love swelled inside me and I had such a good idea. I ran into the house, got the crayons and paper out.
I made one more Valentine. A big one with lots of pink on it because I knew Mom liked pink too. That was probably where I got the idea to have it be my color. I wrote "I Love You" on the back of both Valentines. Then I gave the one store Valentine to Daddy and the homemade Valentine to Mom.
They were so surprised and Daddy grabbed me up into his arms and told me he never had such a sweet little "Milly" in his life. I knew I was special. It was the first dawning on my little heart that I was born to my "Best Friends."
Now I am older, I still remember the good times we had around Valentine's Day. My friends from first grade I have lost track of, but the memories of the love I felt from my parents will last forever. Valentines are healing in so many ways. Valentine's Day is one more opportunity to heal a heart by saying the three words, "I Love You."
Holistic medical doctors combine the modern scientific treatment with complementary or alternative medicine like massage, acupuncture and chiropractic. The holistic doctor looks at everything and then gives a pharmaceutical drug option as well as an alternative treatment that could include homeopathic remedy. Homeopathic treatment isn’t something many doctors and institutions embrace, but it is under the umbrella of holistic medicine.
A holistic doctor will most often encourage some diagnostic testing like hormone levels and adrenal function. This is done so as to try and find if there are any underlying causes that have led to an imbalance. The whole person is considered in the whole healing process so as to have health at its optimal by having balance.
The practitioners in this area are of the belief that a human has parts that are interdependent and when one isn’t working as it should, all the others are affected. This means that if there is any kind of imbalance regardless of the type, it affects the overall health to a great extent.
A good example is a person suffering from migraines. If they decide to visit this kind of doctor, they may not work out with only medications. The doctor will take time to look at all the possible factors that could be causing the headaches. He will also search for any other health problems that could cause the migraines including personal problems, stress, sleep habits and even diet. Treatment can involve using drugs as well as modifications to one’s lifestyle to make sure that the headaches don’t recur.
The principles
Holistic medicine also believes that unconditional support and love are very powerful healers and that a person is actually responsible for their own wellbeing and health. Other principles are:
The patient isn’t a disease but a person
Everyone has got innate healing powers
Treatment should involve the fixing, of course not just dealing with the symptoms.
There is a need for a team approach for healing to be effective and it should involve the doctor and patient and should address all the different aspects of personal life of the patient using a wide range of practices in health care.
Types of treatment
Different treatment techniques are applied to help patients to be responsible and to achieve their optimal health. The approaches depend on the training of the practitioner and they can include:
Education regarding self-care and lifestyle changes so as to promote wellness, including spiritual counseling, relationship counseling, and psychotherapy and even exercise among many others.
Alternative and complementary therapies including naturopathy, massage therapy, homeopathy, chiropractic care and acupuncture. And so on
Surgical procedures and modern medicine.
Where to find a holistic doctor?
Holistic providers can include homeopathic doctors, chiropractors, Naturopathic doctors, osteopathy doctors and even medical doctors. There are different associations that can help you get in touch with such a doctor depending on where you are based. There are online lists that can help you in finding someone close to you.
Don’t settle for the first person you find. This is a profession like others, meaning there are people who do a better job than others. A recommendation from, a trusted source like someone close to you or a health organization that is credible could be a great idea.
With so many relationships breaking down and such a high percentage of marriages ending in divorce it's no wonder that many of us will, at some point, end up back on the dating scene.
We may be older and wiser, a little battered and bruised, but often, once we're ready to date again, thinking about rejoining the fray, we'll be harboring the fantasy of meeting someone special. Back on the dating scene means being optimistic, hopeful and looking forward to finding love again.
What do we need to consider when we're back on the dating scene?
– Our previous relationship experiences may have scarred our view and made us wary of what might go wrong. We may be keen to meet someone new but are nervous of trusting again. Cynicism of others' motives and being uncertain of our own instincts after getting it wrong may be sensible forms of self-protection, but if we treat all new dates with apprehension they will quickly sense our hesitancy and lack of enthusiasm. It's not going to bode well if we're on permanent alert, suspicious of their comments, behavior or intentions.
Counseling and hypnotherapy can be a useful start to the healing process and a good way to deal with past upsets. Therapy can help us to improve our confidence, self-esteem and remedy unwanted habit patterns, so becoming more assertive in an appropriate adult way. Don't forget that most potential dates will have their own story too, with their concerns, unease and fears. Starting out, second time around, can be a cautious time for both.
– This can be a good time to do things that boost your confidence. Maybe your wardrobe, make up or grooming regime need a refresh. Small changes can make a massive difference to how you feel about yourself and often cost very little to implement. Pay attention to current affairs, popular TV and local events so that you can easily join in conversations and offer relevant opinions. Think about picking up a hobby or interest, volunteering or joining a course. Exams don't have to be a factor!
– You may have to deal with children who are not too impressed at the thought of you dating again. They may have been through the damage of the breakup, witnessed the pain of the divorce and are used to you being around, more like your old self and always there for them. The thought of a new 'mum' or 'dad' arriving on the scene may fill them with horror.
Dependant on their age and awareness of the reasons for the breakup, they may have put your ex on a pedestal, especially if he or she is seen as the victim, all alone and struggling to recover. Giving you 'permission' to starting dating again might seem like a step too far and incredibly disloyal.
Children's jealousy, resentment and emotional blackmail may need to be navigated with kind but firm determination, especially if they refuse to share you or treat any potential serious new relationship with shock or disdain. Sometimes it's advisable to keep the fact that you're dating private until you're confident that this new relationship is right for you, even if that decision remains in place for months or even years, until the children are older or more settled.
And if they do insist on overseeing your love life it's important to refuse to allow yourself to be bullied by them. Older children are often determined to live their life on their terms, but equally they must allow you to do the same.
– Ageing, older parents can sometimes start to increase their demands just as you're ready to start back on the dating scene. They may be increasingly fragile and in need of greater levels of support. There may be concerns at leaving them unattended for too long, or that you could be called away at a moments notice. It could make the notion of dating again seem like too much hassle.
But supportive friends or the services offered by many local care agencies could potentially step into the breach and provide whatever level of support is required to help ease those concerns. And mobile phones make us all easily accessible.
– Friends too can send mixed messages. Sometimes at the outset, they may display great enthusiasm about getting you back on the dating scene. They may be keen to introduce you to single friends, arrange coffees, support you as you aim to lose a little weight and update your image. But then, if you become more committed to dating reality may sink in for them. The awareness that if you become serious about someone new and how it could significantly change your close, supportive relationship may hit them hard and prompt them to revise their approach.
Become aware of them starting to discourage you or of them regularly finding fault with your new love interest. Trust your gut and pay attention to any reasonable concerns they may have, but also appreciate that other people's perception of your date will be different to yours, especially if they're coming from a long-established, cozy, familiar relationship scenario.
Have some fun, take good care of yourself and enjoy getting back on the dating scene!
Sex without love wouldn't satisfy you for more than 15 minutes and love without sex wouldn't satisfy you at all. So how do you find both in the same man? That was the question I left you with in a previous article.
A friend of mine is a life-insurance broker. He always says that there is only one rule for survival in sales and that is see people, see people, and see people. It's a numbers game. Of all the people you are going to see only between 2 and 10% will buy from you, so the more you see, the better your sales. Meeting people is exactly the same; the more people you meet, the better your chance of meeting the right person. Luckily there are a few possibilities in meeting new people.
The older guys (read: even older than I am) tell us that they didn't have gay clubs, bars, or dating services so they had to refine their gaydar and flirting skills. The fact is that those skills are still just as valuable today as they were years ago. Another important skill is taking it one step at a time. Two types of guys never end up with a perfect match; those who fly off in a second, and those who never come out of the starting block. The guys that fly off are proposing marriage before they even know the other guy, and those in the starting blocks only stare evening in and evening out.
If you are a flyer you need to relax. Look for friends in stead of possible partners. Nothing is a bigger turn-off than a guy who hits on you after he has tried everybody else on his way to your table. Friendly people have a few good friends, many acquaintances, and two or three possible people they might be interested in. Guys who try to fly into serious relationships have no friends, one or two acquaintances, and the whole city as possible people they are interested in. The important thing you should learn from this is that you start by meeting lots of people, you will find a few very good friends among them, and in time you will meet somebody you are really interested in. Flyers always run the risk of getting their heart broken on a weekly basis. You can never keep up with who they are in love with – it changes every time you see them, and every month or two they try you yet again. That is when you decide to ignore them completely.
The guys who never take off are almost in the same position. They see a possibility every night, but they are too scared to do anything about it. They look a bit weird if they stand in a corner ogling everybody so you ignore them as well. They have a few acquaintances that turns into friends because they normally end up in a group of seekers – waiting for something that never happens. If you are in such a group get out and start building your self-esteem. If you do not think that you are good enough as a partner, nobody else will believe in you either.
With that in your mind go back to the gay clubs, gay bars, dating sites, and the gay section of your local bookstore – start by making friends, being a good friend, and enjoying friendship for its own rewards. Stay away from the friend-zone – that is the ogling bunch in the corner. You will do fine.
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.” – President John F. Kennedy (1962)
This week may be one of the worst weeks for Nigerian judiciary and they might have made the much vaunted Sowore’s revolution inevitable. The first salvo was the list of judges released by the National Judicial Council replete with the names of their sons and daughters as well as hangers on. Second is the farcical decision in EFCC vs Kalu where the Supreme Court “suo motu” created a new section to the constitution of Nigeria by vacating a conviction duly given under an extant law. The strange rationale by the Supreme Court is that the presiding judge, now elevated to the Court of Appeal should not have pronounced the sentence. The Court conveniently ignored the fact that the accused counsel had invited the judge to come back and continue the hearing by a formal letter!
Gone are the days when Nigerian judiciary is famously celebrated as the last bastion of defense for the common man. The days of Kayode Esho, Chukwudifu Oputa, Muhammed Uwais is long gone. Our judiciary is no more like Caesar’s wife, above board. The problem however is not necessarily down to the hydra headed monster of corruption alone but a more sinister evil called, nepotism. It is my humble opinion that an opaque process for selection of judges led us to where we found ourselves this week. And the problem did not start with the current chief justice. The dysfunction and bastardization have been long in coming, and as we will find out in this piece, the cancer has eaten deep into the fabric of this nation. The revolution is inevitable.
Lawyers
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What precipitate this write up is a social media post by a good friend of mine and I obtained his permission to repost his comment with my personal edits: “It took Orji Kalu only 4 months including Covid lockdown challenge to move from the High Court to Supreme Court to get his so called sound judgment from Supreme Court while it took ten years to get his case completed at the High Court level. Ten good years! And we are told justice in Nigeria is not cash and carry? The Supreme Court is preparing the ground for a revolution and very soon something extraordinary will take place. The same Supreme Court that will give 2021 and 2022 court date for poor defendants, sat and summarily decide a case within 4 months while cases of those facing a life sentence languish in the labyrinth of jungle justice!”
My first response to the post, is to retort that the problem did not start with judiciary, but they seem to have led the “nunc dimitis” for the internment of democracy in Nigeria. The judiciary may have pushed us to the praecipe but they were not the only one. We all recalled the impunity days of PDP rule and how they ride roughshod on people’s right, celebrating acquisition of jets obtained from corrupt practices while hordes of masses suffer the indignity of scrapping for foods from the gutter. Towards the end of that era, we all thought, if we can just get a man of integrity into Aso Rock, someone who will brook no atom of corruption, we will change the country. The election of 2015 seems to have lulled Nigerians into thinking that all we need is someone or a duo with integrity, so we elect Buhari and Osinbajo, a puritan and a pastor and went home satiated. What we were not prepared for or more appositely choose to ignore is the fact that the vehicle that brought them into governance is none other than the decrepit system that PDP used to feather their nest. In the first 4 years, we were told that the problem is with the National Assembly where the legistlooters shifted their control of the vortex of power in Abuja, opposing every anti-corruption moves of the executives. Then come the last election where the ruling party now controls the executive and legislative arm, but corruption runs through the gamut of the judiciary and Aso Rock looks the other way while nepotism festers in its rank.
It is as if the cancer has completely swallowed up the entire fabric of the nation. Cases involving the poor dragged on for years while those who can afford senior advocate can get quick justice. Many warned that this will sound the death knell of democracy in Nigeria. Every attempt to even build on free and fair election has been truncated by the judiciary. What with the recent confounding judgment from Imo and Bayelsa. Our two gargantuan political parties now owned our judiciary lock, stock and barrel. They sit in smoke filled rooms to determine who will be governors, legislators and judges, and those who will play ball are readily appointed as pawns in the chest board of the Nigerian ruling class, wives, nephews, cousins, sons and daughters are made judges and senior advocates overnight without recourse to any modicum of meritocracy. A friend of mine recently quipped that the problem of nepotism is not just that it defeats meritocracy and breeds mediocrity but that it infects the entire body politics and renders it comatose. Corruption can be traced, and ill-gotten wealth recovered but nepotism is more sinister. Those who obtain position of power and authority through nepotism hold fealty only to their masters who appointed them. Such appointee will readily twist the constitution, made up section that does not exist all at the behest of their “godfather”. It is insidious and evil.
I graduated from Nigerian Law School 30 years ago, after an excellent stint at Great Ife. My class at Ife, drawn from the north, east, west middle belt and south-south has in its rank some of the best legal minds any country will be proud of. We graduated with high hopes to take on the world and change the land. Few of us found ourselves abroad on scholarship where we flourish and excel. Those in legal practice in Nigeria, either at the federal or state ministry of justice or private practice are the ones my heart bleeds for, especially those without access to members of the National Judicial Council. I have had the privilege to advance my career abroad as an attorney and public defender. I frequently sit on panels that recommend colleagues for appointment as judges in a fair, open and transparent process; something my colleagues in Nigeria could only dream of.
When I look at the state of Nigerian legal practice my heart bleeds. The career growth of colleagues in the legal profession in Nigeria is stunted not for lack of excellence but influence in the right place. Influence peddling is an art form in Nigeria and politicians used to have the exclusive preserve of selling it to the highest bidder, but our Judicial Council seems to have mastered the art. The problem will not be this pronounced if the sons and daughters they are foisting on Nigerian judiciary are steeped in the Nigerian experience or have a modicum of merit. As many of my colleagues are apt to complain, majority of the recent appointees hardly spend few years in Nigeria. They all went to schools abroad. Totally devoid of the Nigerian experience, and constantly removed from the everyday life Nigerians suffers under. Majority of them lives in the gilded mansions of their forbears in Abuja and other state capitals, where they are rarely touched by the “better angels of our nature” to use the phrase coined by Abraham Lincoln. It is therefore no surprise that they care only for what their “godfather” demand.
Let me however warns that the biggest mistake we could make is to think that the rot is only in the heart of our judiciary. Think again. Nepotism is next door, next street, next town and everywhere in Nigeria. It rampages through the land, be it North, East or West. Just look at our churches and mosques, who do you see minister or lead the prayers when the founder/visioner is not around? You guess right, if you say their sons and daughters. Gone are the days when Pa Fadayomi push to have a meritorious doctor of aerodynamics succeed him. Gone are the days when the leader of the faithful in Nigeria is selected by their aptitude in the knowledge of the Quaran. Nowadays, the exit of the leader is the beginning of the reign of the progeny. It has infected our colleges and universities, scholarship and opportunities that used to be available on merit are now exclusive preserve of the vice chancelor’s children and family members. Woe betide the school senate members that dare ask questions. Advertisement for jobs that has already been reserved for the children of the privileged are means to extort money in the form of application fees a la Abba Moro immigration recruitment scheme. A recent recruitment without advertisement at our apex bank reported by Sahara Reporters shows that successful applicants names were picked out of the rolodex of the governor. Commercial Banks staff are not an exemption, they are either recruited based on sex appeal or influential ministers/senators’ “recommendation” which doesn’t come easy for the educated but less privileged applicants.
A friend concluded an animated discussion on social media on this issue with a distinctively Nigerian resignation: “It is clear that those who do not want things to work properly in Nigeria are more powerful than those who are working towards finding solutions to our problems.” Again, my response is what do we have to lose if we embrace Omoyele Sowore’s revolution, even with its youthful disdain for experience? Especially when our current experienced leadership seems to treat the Nigerian masses with contempt. Look at it this way: They do not need our votes to win election, as they could procure midnight judgment in Abuja a la Bayelsa and Imo. They do not need to legislate to fill any lacunae in our constitutional experience as the Supreme Court proved in Kalu’s case. In fact, as long as oil flows and they have the means to fill their Cayman Island bank accounts, we may as well not exist. Greed and avarice have become the directive principle of Nigerian ruling class. To rescue ourselves from their vice grip, we need revolution now!
On 8 May 1980, the 33rd World Health Assembly officially declared: ‘The world and all its peoples have won freedom from smallpox.’
The declaration marked the end of a disease that had plagued humanity for at least 3 000 years, killing 300 million people in the 20th century alone.
It was ended, thanks to a 10-year global effort, spearheaded by the World Health Organization, that involved thousands of health workers around the world to administer half a billion vaccinations to stamp out smallpox.
The US$ 300m price-tag to eradicate smallpox saves the world well over US$ 1 billion every year since 1980.
Speaking at a virtual event hosted at WHO-HQ, involving key players in the eradication effort, WHO Director-General, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said, “As the world confronts the COVID-19 pandemic, humanity’s victory over smallpox is a reminder of what is possible when nations come together to fight a common health threat.”
The world got rid of smallpox thanks to an incredible demonstration of global solidarity, and because it had a safe and effective vaccine. Solidarity plus science equalled solution!
Dr Tedros highlighted that smallpox eradication also offers hope for efforts to eliminate other infectious diseases, including polio, which is now endemic in just two countries. To date, 187 countries, territories and areas have been certified free of Guinea worm disease, with seven more to go. And the fight against malaria has so far resulted in 38 countries and territories certified as malaria-free. In the case of Tuberculosis (TB), 57 countries and territories with low TB incidence are on track to reach TB elimination.
At the event, Dr Tedros unveiled a commemorative postal stamp to recognize the global solidarity that drove the initiative and honour the efforts of health workers who ensured its success.
The stamp, developed by the United Nations Postal Administration (UNPA), in collaboration with WHO, signifies what national unity and global solidary can achieve. Numerous countries, such as Guinea, India, Nigeria, Philippines, Togo and others issued smallpox stamps to show support for, and raise awareness about WHO’s Intensified Smallpox Eradication Programme launched in 1967.
WHO Regional Director for Africa, Dr Matshidiso Moeti’s earliest memories of smallpox is of her father. “I was visiting WHO headquarters, and I saw a photo of my Dad, standing with the other experts on the Global Commission. I remember him going out, doing follow-up visits with patients. He often would go with a driver and disappear into the bush for days. I felt in awe of his tireless work. The strategies used to eradicate smallpox still apply today.”
“Lessons learned from smallpox are used today to respond to disease outbreaks. For example, house-to-house active case-finding underpins the polio eradication programme, and ring vaccination of contacts is helping to combat the spread of the Ebola virus disease. Similarly, surveillance, case-finding, testing, contact-tracing, quarantine, and communication campaigns to dispel misinformation are central to controlling COVID-19, “ explained David Heymann, Professor of Infectious Disease Epidemiology at The London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) and Distinguished Fellow, Global Health Security at Chatham House, London.
Following smallpox eradication, WHO and UNICEF launched the Expanded Programme on Immunization, under which 85% of the world’s children are vaccinated and protected from debilitating diseases.
With the potential of a COVID-19 vaccine ahead, ensuring sufficient supplies and reaching people in hard to reach places is a high priority. Addressing vaccine hesitancy poses a significant challenge to stop the virus. Access to accurate public health information and education is critical to ensure that the public has the facts to keep themselves and others safe.
To permanently commemorate the eradication of smallpox and the lessons learned on a global scale, rather than every 10-years, WHO is calling museums, exhibition companies, designers, curators and associations to develop an immersive, interactive and educational exhibition on smallpox and its relevance for COVID-19 and global health security. The exhibition, which will be unveiled later this year, will promote a better understanding of public health and empower people to keep informed and safe during a pandemic.
Notes to the media
Smallpox stamp
The smallpox stamp is in the denomination of CHF 1,70. It was designed by Sergio Baradat (United Nations) in collaboration with the World Health Organization and is available for purchase at unstamps.org. The stamp can be used to mail postcards and letters around the world, provided that they are sent from the UN headquarters in New York, Geneva or Vienna respectively.
Smallpox Eradication dates
On 9 December 1979, a global commission certified that smallpox had been eradicated, and this certification was officially accepted by the 33rd World Health Assembly in 1980.
Museum Exhibition
Exhibition design companies, museums, curators and other companies/organizations in this field are invited to express their interest to develop an immersive, educational exhibition on smallpox and its relevance for COVID-19 and global health security by writing to privatesectorpartners@who.int
Read More
https://www.who.int/news-room/detail/08-05-2020-commemorating-smallpox-eradication-a-legacy-of-hope-for-covid-19-and-other-diseases
The third meeting of the Emergency Committee convened by the WHO Director-General under the International Health Regulations (2005) (IHR) regarding the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), took place on Thursday, 30 April 2020, from 12:00 to 17:45 Geneva
time (CEST).
Proceedings of the meeting
Members and advisors of the Emergency Committee were convened by teleconference. Membership of the Emergency Committee was expanded
to reflect the nature of the pandemic and the need to include additional areas of expertise.
The Director-General welcomed the Committee, thanked them for their commitment to enhancing global public health, and provided an overview of the major achievements in the COVID-19 response since the last Emergency Committee meeting on 30 January 2020.
Representatives of the legal department and the Department of Compliance, Risk Management, and Ethics (CRE) briefed the members on their roles and responsibilities.
The Ethics Officer from CRE provided the members and advisers with an overview of the WHO Declaration of Interest process. The members and advisers were made aware of their individual responsibility to disclose to WHO, in a timely manner, any interests
of a personal, professional, financial, intellectual or commercial nature that may give rise to a perceived or direct conflict of interest. They were additionally reminded of their duty to maintain the confidentiality of the meeting discussions and
the work of the committee. Only those committee members and advisers who were not considered to have any perceived or direct conflict of interest participated in the meeting.
The Secretariat turned the meeting over to the Chair, Professor Houssin. He also welcomed the Committee and reviewed the objectives and agenda of the meeting.
The WHO Regional Emergency Directors and the Executive Director of the WHO Health Emergencies Programme (WHE) provided regional and the global situation overview. After ensuing discussion, the Committee unanimously agreed that the outbreak still constitutes
a public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC) and offered advice to the Director-General.
The Director-General declared that the outbreak of COVID-19 continues to constitute a PHEIC. He accepted the advice of the Committee to WHO and issued the Committee’s advice to States Parties as Temporary Recommendations under the IHR.
The Emergency Committee will be reconvened within three months or earlier, at the discretion of the Director-General. The Director-General thanked the Committee for its work.
Advice to WHO
Coordination, planning, and monitoring
Continue to lead and coordinate the global response to the COVID-19 pandemic in collaboration with countries, the United Nations (UN), and other partners.
Work with fragile states and vulnerable countries that require additional technical, logistical and commodity support.
Establish mechanisms to compile lessons learned from country and partner experiences and WHO missions and share the best practices and updated recommendations.
Provide further guidance to countries about adjusting public health measures, taking into account the different epidemiological situations of the pandemic.
Promote the inclusion of all interested countries, including low- and middle-income countries from all regions, in the Solidarity clinical trials for therapeutics and vaccines.
Continue efforts with partners to obtain equitable access to personal protective equipment, diagnostics, and biomedical equipment essential to the pandemic COVID-19 response.
Continue to coordinate global expert networks in epidemiology, laboratory, vaccines, clinical care, infection prevention and control, social sciences, and operational research; modelling; and other technical support.
One Health
Work with the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE), the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), and countries to identify the zoonotic source of the virus and the route of introduction to the human population, including
the possible role of intermediate hosts. This should be accomplished through efforts such as scientific and collaborative field missions, which will enable targeted interventions and a research agenda to reduce the risk of similar events.
Work closely with OIE and FAO to provide guidance on how to prevent SARS-CoV-2 infections in animals and humans and prevent the establishment of new zoonotic reservoirs.
Work with partner organizations and countries to strengthen the global food supply chain, protect food workers, properly manage food markets, and mitigate possible disruptions to the food supply.
Essential Health Services
Support countries to assess and manage the unintended consequences of public health measures implemented to control the COVID-19 pandemic, including gender-based violence and child neglect.
Support countries to monitor their ability to provide and strengthen essential health services throughout a likely extended COVID-19 response. This should include, but is not limited to, essential prevention for communicable diseases, particularly
vaccination; services related to reproductive health, including care during pregnancy and childbirth; care of vulnerable populations, such as young infants and older adults; provision of medications and supplies for the ongoing management of chronic
diseases, including mental health conditions; continuity of critical inpatient therapies; management of emergency health conditions and common acute presentations that require time-sensitive intervention; and auxiliary services, such as basic
diagnostic imaging, laboratory services, and blood bank services.
Support countries to address shortages of essential medicines and health products, personal protective equipment, and other medical supplies and to establish sustainable risk management practices to prevent future shortages.
Risk communication and community engagement
Continue risk communications and community engagement activities through the WHO Information Network for Epidemics (EPI-WIN) and other platforms to counter rumours and misinformation.
Continue to regularly communicate clear messages, guidance, and advice about the evolution of the COVID-19 pandemic, how to reduce transmission, and save lives.
Work with partners and countries to articulate potential long-term consequences of COVID-19 pandemic, emphasizing the need for strengthened cross-sectoral preparedness, transparency and global coordination.
Surveillance
Clarify the testing strategy, support countries to increase testing capacity, and aim to provide equitable access to diagnostic tests and supplies in light of market failures and global shortages.
Continue to provide guidance on monitoring disease trends using Severe Acute Respiratory Infections (SARI) and Influenza Like Illness (ILI) surveillance systems in anticipation of the co-circulation of influenza viruses.
Develop qualitative and quantitative indicators that countries can use to assess and monitor SARS-CoV-2 transmission at all levels of public health response.
Continue to support countries and partners by providing technical and operational guidance, training platforms, and tools such as Go.Data,to enhance case identification and contact tracing capacity, strengthen the public health workforce, and engage
communities for contact tracing.
Provide clear qualitative and quantitative indicators to monitor SARS-CoV-2 transmission to inform the adjustment of public health and social measures.
Travel and Trade
Continue working with countries and partners to enable essential travel needed for pandemic response, humanitarian relief, repatriation, and cargo operations.
Develop strategic guidance with partners for the gradual return to normal operations of passenger travel in a coordinated manner that provides appropriate protection when physical distancing is not feasible.
Update recommendations on appropriate travel measures and analyze their effects on international transmission of COVID-19, with consideration of the balance between benefits and unintended consequences, including entry and exit screening, education
of travelers on responsible travel behaviour, case finding, contact tracing, isolation, and quarantine, by incorporating evidence on the potential role of pre-symptomatic and asymptomatic transmission.
To all States Parties
Coordination and Collaboration
Support WHO leadership and continue to collaborate with WHO at all levels of the organization and with other countries to enable effective global COVID-19 pandemic preparedness and response.
Participate in global solidarity efforts to enable access to essential supplies for all.
Document and share lessons learned from efforts to control the pandemic, including the timing, pace, and sequencing of the application and lifting of public health measures.
Preparedness
Strengthen preparedness for health emergencies, and build resilient health systems, incorporating lessons learned during different stages of the pandemic, and sharing experiences with other countries.
Surveillance
Work with WHO and multisectoral partners to interrupt transmission by maintaining robust surveillance systems; enhancing capacities for case detection, testing, isolation of cases, contact tracing, quarantine of contacts, and rapid response; strengthening
the public health workforce; and actively engaging communities for contact tracing, with a particular focus on high risk areas.
In settings where testing a large proportion of suspected cases is not possible, monitor overall trends; undertake early detection through laboratory confirmation of a limited number of cases with a focus on health workers; and rapidly implement
public health measures.
Share with WHO all data necessary to conduct global risk assessments through data platforms, such as the Global Influenza Surveillance and Response System and the IHR mechanism. These data should include SARI and ILI where available.
Use the WHO qualitative and quantitative indicators to assess and monitor SARS-CoV-2 transmission at all levels of public health response.
Additional Health Measures
Avoid restrictions on international transport of food, medical and other essential supplies and permit the safe movement of essential personnel required for an effective pandemic response.
Implement appropriate travel measures with consideration of their public health benefits, including entry and exit screening, education of travelers on responsible travel behaviour, case finding, contact tracing, isolation, and quarantine, by
incorporating evidence on the potential role of pre-symptomatic and asymptomatic transmission.
Implement and monitor case finding and contact tracing of travellers, using digital tools where appropriate.
Continue to review travel and trade measures based on regular risk assessments, transmission patterns at origin and destination, cost-benefit analysis, evolution of the pandemic, and new knowledge of COVID-19.
Engage in global efforts to respond to the challenges of COVID-19 in managing maritime vessels.
Do not implement trade restrictions beyond those considered to be of public health importance in accordance with relevant international agreements.
Continue to provide appropriate public health rationale to WHO for additional health measures in accordance with IHR.
Health Workers
Prioritize the protection of the health workforce through access to training and provision of personal protective equipment, infection prevention and control measures, improved working conditions, application of WHO recommended testing strategies,
and prevention of stigma and attacks on health workers.
Food Security
Work with WHO and partners to strengthen the global food supply chain, protect food workers, properly manage food markets, and mitigate possible disruptions to the food supply, especially for vulnerable populations.
One Health
Promote sound practices to manage risks of trade of live animals in food markets and regulate trade of exotic wildlife.
Risk Communications and Community Engagement
Continue to engage communities to address rumours and misinformation and keep the public informed, with a focus on vulnerable populations.
Research and development
Address research gaps such as: routes of transmission, including the role of asymptomatic and pre-symptomatic infection droplet, contact, fomite and aerosol transmission; and viral shedding; and animal source and intermediate hosts, in collaboration
with partners.
Continue to support and conduct COVID-19 research, in line with the WHO Research and Development Blueprint, and the road map for COVID-19 vaccines, diagnostics, and therapeutics.
Continue sharing full genome sequences to increase global understanding of virus evolution and phylogenetics and their application to public health practices.
Essential Health Services
Maintain essential health services throughout a likely extended COVID-19 response. This should include essential prevention for communicable diseases, particularly vaccination; services related to reproductive health, including care during pregnancy
and childbirth; care of vulnerable populations, such as young infants and older adults; provision of medications and supplies for the ongoing management of chronic diseases, including mental health conditions; continuity of critical inpatient
therapies; management of emergency health conditions and common acute presentations that require time-sensitive intervention; and auxiliary services, such as basic diagnostic imaging, laboratory services, and blood bank services.
Continue to track and document the impact of COVID-19 on essential health services.
Read More
https://www.who.int/news-room/detail/01-05-2020-statement-on-the-third-meeting-of-the-international-health-regulations-(2005)-emergency-committee-regarding-the-outbreak-of-coronavirus-disease-(covid-19)
Rule of Law and Accountability Advocacy Centre has been monitoring and receiving information on public compliance with the Federal Government ordered lockdown in Abuja, Lagos and Ogun states, which contain measures to contain the ravaging Covid-19 pandemic.
Our monitoring of the compliance with the lockdown and stay-at-home orders in Lagos, Abuja and few other states indicate that most people are finding it difficult to effectively comply for various reasons.
First, there are those, who still don’t believe that Covid-19 is a real life-threatening pandemic and that precautionary measures such as social distancing, personal hygiene and other outlined measures can prevent its infection and spread.
In fact some have been made to believe that the lockdown is a deception by government to achieve other ulterior motives. Those, who promote this narrative are mainly the apocalyptic Pentecostal ‘Men of God’, who push arguments linking Covid-19 to 5G mobile technology, which they argue is a part of the biblically ordained designs of the Anti-Christ.
Second, some Nigerians are simply lawless or lack discipline, just like when passengers are asked to switch off their phones prior to flight take off and you still find some people, seemingly ladies and gentlemen, fiddling with their phones.
To illustrate, a relative of mine called me yesterday to complain that he was arrested by the police somewhere in Lagos when he drove out to buy pap for his baby. I asked him whether he knew about the lockdown order and whether there was nowhere around his neighbourhood he could walk down to buy the pap. He said ‘but other vehicles are on the road’. I told him that he had broken the law as much as those other people. Everybody may not be arrested at once.
He wanted me to talk to the police officers, who arrested him and ordered him to drive to their station. I asked him what he wanted me to tell them.
Third, and most significantly, there are yet others, who are forced out of their homes by want and hunger. They can’t stand the site of their tender children crying for hunger.
As I said elsewhere, majority of the population fall within the poor and vulnerable category. Usually, many feed themselves and their dependents on their daily earnings. They live from hand to mouth.
Under the prevailing difficult and uncertain situation, many families and individuals are already suffering and starving, just one week into the lockdown, with one more week left to go, with the probability of an extension.
The Federal Government’s Social Intervention Policy, the so-called conditional cash transfer is not yet addressing mass poverty, deprivation and hunger. The billions, which government announced that it has released and made available for conditional cash transfer to the poor and vulnerable in communities are not reaching the targets. There are still cries of woe and anguish in most communities.
We have seen videos of caricature of the ‘social intervention’, of food items shared to some communities. In one video, we saw a street in Lagos of over 30 families, who said they were given two loaves of bread and few cups of rice and garri and few condiments (tomato paste sachets) to share. And we see members of the community lamenting and asking how a whole street of over 30 families could be given such quantity of food items not enough to serve one family for two days to share!
Corruption has become our national culture. A seemingly intractable challenge to our progress and development. Most of our politicians and public office holders are unscrupulously avaricious.
Given our past experiences where public funds meant for and released to assuage the sufferings of poor and vulnerable communities were either unconscionably used to ‘cut grasses’ or inexplicably got ‘swallowed by snakes’, we call for transparent and community-based approaches to the management and disbursement of social intervention funds.
Considering complaints by many local communities about not benefiting from the released billions of naira announced and meant to alleviate poverty and hardship, especially during this difficult and uncertain period, we call for a transparent and effective investigation of the management of the funds so far allocated. Efforts must be put in place to ensure that the funds are not diverted as usual.
Independent community committees must receive these funds and be charged with identifying those in their midst, who qualify to benefit.
The management of the funds should be monitored by a multi-stakeholder committee including government and community representatives as well as credible media and civil society representatives.
Government must put effective measures in place to check corrupt public officials, who want to steal or divert funds meant to relieve the sufferings of the poor and vulnerable people in this perilous times.
This is the only way to help the people comply with the law and stay at home for now!
Finally, since government has been announcing huge numbers of beneficiaries of cash transfer program running into millions and claiming to have paid billions, can the government make the system transparent by publishing the names and addresses of the beneficiaries on an electronic portal so that Nigerians can do the verification?
Okechukwu Nwanguma is the Executive Director of Rule of Law and Accountability Advocacy Centre
Originally broadcast live on 06 April 2020, the daily press briefing on coronavirus COVID-19, direct from WHO Headquarters, Geneva Switzerland with Dr Tedros WHO Director-General, Dr Micheal Ryan, Executive Director of the Health Emergencies Programme, and Dr Maria Van Kerkhove, Technical lead, WHO Health Emergencies Programme with special guests Lady Gaga and Hugh Evans, CEO and Co-founder of Global Citizen.
Transcript:
Speaker key:
TJ Tarik Jasarevic
TAG Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus
LG Lady Gaga
HE Hugh Evans
MR Dr Michael Ryan JA Jamie
MK Dr Maria Van Kerkhove KA Kai
KT Kate
IN Innocent
YA Yang
00:00:19
TJ Good evening to everyone from Geneva and WHO headquarters. Welcome to the regular press conference on COVID-19. Journalists who are online can ask their questions by clicking raise hand if you are
on Zoom. Today we have a special guest but I will let Dr Tedros do his opening remarks and introduce them. Before I give the floor to Dr Tedros, just to remind you, we will also be sending you some news from other
WHO offices around the world with the audio file from this press briefing a little bit later. I give the floor immediately to Dr Tedros.
00:01:07
TAG Good morning, good afternoon and good evening. The COVID-19 pandemic continues to take a heavy toll on families, communities and nations the world over but it’s also giving rise to incredible acts of generosity,
solidarity and co-operation. We have said consistently that we’re all in this together and we can only succeed together. We need an all- of-society approach with everyone playing their part. That includes people in the entertainment
industry.
Today I’m very delighted to be joined by one of the biggest names in entertainment in the world, Lady Gaga, and my friend Hugh Evans, the founder and CEO of Global Citizen.
WHO has been working with Global Citizen for several weeks on the Together At Home concert series with artists like Chris Martin and John Legend giving free online performances.
Now we’re working with Lady Gaga and Global Citizen to take this concept and make it even bigger through the One World Together At Home virtual global special on Saturday 18th April. It’s now my great pleasure to invite
Lady Gaga and Hugh Evans to say more about this very special event, One World.
00:03:10
LG Thank you very much, Dr Tedros. Good morning, good afternoon and good evening to everyone who’s listening and watching. I would like to thank the World Health Organization and the
United Nations as well as Global Citizen; thank you very much, Dr Tedros and Hugh Evans, for all of your leadership in this fight against COVID-19 and thank you very much to the World Health Organization for asking me to collaborate
with you on this special.
We are also very grateful to all of the healthcare professionals across the country and around the world who are on the front lines during COVID-19. This global pandemic is a catastrophe. I’m so thankful to them and I’m also
praying for those who are sick. It’s been a pleasure to partner with Global Citizen and we’ve been working all together behind the scenes to raise money for the World Health Organization.
I would also like to send my prayers as well to people that are losing their jobs and are having a hard time feeding themselves and their children. We are raising money for the World Health
Organization’s COVID-19 Solidarity Response Fund and seven days ago we held a call with more than 68 corporate leaders from some of the world’s biggest and most generous companies and I asked them to join my corporate kindness
list as there have been many corporations and philanthropists that have been very, very generous during this time.
00:04:38
Since then we have also been calling on philanthropists around the world as well and tech companies included. I’d like to reiterate our deep gratitude to the medical community. My heart is very, very aching and warm for those
who are ER doctors as well as nurses who are sleeping in cars to make sure they don’t infect their families or their patients. What you’re doing is putting yourselves in harm’s way to help the world
and we all salute you and you are a triumph truly.
I am proud to say that over the past seven days we’ve raised a total of $35 million for the Solidarity Fund. This money will [inaudible] essential PPE, supplies and testing kits around the world and will help improve lab capacity
to rapidly process tests. It will also [inaudible] research development. It is so important to think globally and to support the World Health Organization to curb the pandemic and prevent future outbreaks.
I know Dr Tedros is particularly concerned about Africa and [inaudible]. We also need to act globally by supporting local charities and initiatives so that the front-line health workers in most immediate need have the resources they need
to survive during this time. It has been an honour to help with this huge broadcast event, which will take place on April 18th, where we need to tell the stories of and celebrate the front-line community, healthcare workers and their acts of kindness.
We will be on different networks, many networks actually and I want to [inaudible] about what we’re going to be doing. What’s very important is that two things happen for all of us; that we celebrate and we highlight the singular, kind global community
that is arising right now. Two, we want to highlight the gravity of this historically unprecedented cultural movement and, three, we want to celebrate and encourage the power of the human spirit.
00:06:47
I would like to, on behalf of the World Health Organization and Global Citizen, thank Dr Tedros as well as everyone that has donated so far. We are going to continue fundraising but I would like to also let you know that
this broadcast special is not actually a fundraiser. We all wanted to raise the money before we went on air so when we do air live on April 18th put your wallets away, put your credit cards away, anything
away that you need to and just sit back and enjoy the show that you all very much deserve.
I’d like to pass this now to Hugh Evans, who’s been a wonderful partner of mine. Hugh, thank you so much and thank you, Dr Tedros.
HE Good morning, good afternoon, good evening and thank you, Dr Tedros and thank you, Lady Gaga. Your Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen; Lady Gaga, Dr Tedros,
you’ve both demonstrated extraordinary leadership at an unprecedented moment when our society is being challenged like never before and we are so thankful for your leadership. I’d like to echo Lady Gaga’s sentiment and commend the incredible acts
of bravery demonstrated by the front-line community health workers around the world and I hope that we as a shared humanity emerge from this moment forever grateful for the work of doctors, nurses, teachers, grocery store workers and all of those who are
the backbone of our communities.
Global health is at the very core of the global citizen mission and we must ensure that the world’s poorest and most marginalised people have access to resources to cope with and tackle this health crisis. Through One
World: Together At Home on April 18th we’ll be calling on philanthropists, corporations and governments to fund critical global COVID-19 response efforts including distribution of resources and PPE to critical front-line healthcare
workers.
00:09:09
In our partnership with the WHO and United Nations Global Citizen is committed to driving action to help ensure our global health systems are strong enough to stop a future pandemic before it happens. April 18th is going to be a moment of global unity
connecting the world through a historic global broadcast. We are bringing together the greatest artists in the world under the passionate and extremely talented curation of Lady Gaga.
In alphabetical order some of the artists we’ll be announcing today include Alanis Morissette, Andrea Bocelli, Billie Eilish, Billy Joe Armstrong of Green Day, Burna Boy, Chris Martin, Sir David Beckham, Eddie Vedder,
Sir Elton John, Finneas, Idris and Sabrina Elba, J Balvin, John Legend, Kacey Musgraves, Keith Urban, Kerry Washington, Lang Lang, Lizzo, Maluma, Sir Paul McCartney, Priyanka Chopra Jonas, Shah Rukh Khan, Stevie Wonder and many more to be announced over the coming weeks from all corners of the globe under the passionate and extremely talented curation of Lady Gaga.
We’re grateful to all of you for participating and supporting this critical effort. One World Together At Home will be broadcast live on Saturday April 18th 2020 at 5:00pm PDT, 8:00pm EDT and 12:00am BST, airing on ABC, NBC, Viacom and CBS networks,
IHeartMedia, and Bell media networks and platforms in Canada. Internationally BBC1 will run the programme on Sunday April 19th and additional international broadcasters include BN Media Group, Multi-Choice Group and RTE in Ireland.
00:11:43
The digital broadcast will celebrate and support brave community health workers who are doing life-saving work on the front line and we’ve all seen the limitations of world leaders around this world to step up and face this extraordinary challenge
and we want to do our best to support the essential work of the World Health Organization, driving action and raising critical funds. Thank you again, Dr Tedros, and thank you, Lady Gaga, for your leadership.
Thank you all.
TJ Thank you very much to our guests for their remarks. Dr Tedros, I guess you would like to thank them too.
TAG Once again I would like to thank Lady Gaga and Hugh Evans for their partnership. We had a call last week and I was so amazed by the energy and passion of Lady Gaga. It’s incredible commitment to humanity and that’s
when I said, I think what she has planned can happen. It’s bringing the world together to improve awareness and to mobilise resources to fight the pandemic so I thank her for her incredible passion and commitment and leadership and
also to my friend, Hugh Evans, for connecting all the dots and for his leadership.
We all look forward to joining you for the One World: Together At Home concert on 18th April. As the pandemic continues we recognise that individuals and governments want to do everything they can to protect themselves and others and so do we.
We understand that some countries have recommended or are considering the use of both medical and non-medical masks in the general population to prevent the spread of COVID-19.
00:14:21
First and foremost medical masks must be prioritised for health workers on the front lines of the response. We know medical masks can help to protect health workers but they’re in short supply globally. We’re concerned that the mass
use of medical masks by the general population could exacerbate the shortage of these specialised masks for the people who need them most. In some places these shortages are putting health workers in real danger.
In healthcare facilities WHO continues to recommend the use of medical masks, respirators and other personal protective equipment for health workers. In the community we recommend the use of medical masks by people who are sick and those who
are caring for a sick person at home.
WHO has been evaluating the use of medical and non-medical masks for COVID-19 more widely. Today WHO is issuing guidance and criteria to support countries in making that decision. For example countries could consider using masks in communities where other measures such as cleaning hands and physical distancing are harder to achieve because of lack of water or cramped living conditions.
If masks are worn they must be used safely and properly. WHO has guidance on how to put on, take off and dispose of masks. What’s clear is that there is limited research in this area. We encourage countries that are considering the use
of masks for the general population to study their effectiveness so we can all learn. Most importantly masks should only ever be used as part of a comprehensive package of interventions. There is no black or white answer and no silver bullet.
Masks alone cannot stop the pandemic. Countries must continue to find, test, isolate and treat every case and trace every contact. Mask or no mask, there are proven things all of us can do to protect ourselves and others.
00:17:13
Keep your distance, clean your hands, cough or sneeze into your elbow and avoid touching your face. Less than 100 days since WHO was notified about the new coronavirus research has accelerated at incredible speed. The viral genome
was mapped in early January and shared globally, which enabled tests to be developed and vaccine research to start. More than 70 countries have joined WHO’s Solidarity Trial to accelerate the search for an effective treatment and about
20 institutions and companies are racing to develop a vaccine.
WHO is committed to ensuring that as medicines and vaccines are developed they’re shared equitably with all countries and people. I want to thank the Medicines Patent Pool and Unitaid for the initiative they announced last
Friday to include medicines and diagnostics for COVID-19 in their licensing pool.
I also want to thank the President of Costa Rica, President Carlos Alvadaro, and the Health Minister, Daniel Salas, for their proposal to create a pool of rights to tests, medicines and vaccines with free access or licensing on reasonable and affordable
terms for all countries. Muchas gracias, Mr President. I support this proposal and we’re working with Costa Rica to finalise the details.
00:19:09
Poorer countries and fragile economies stand to face the biggest shock from this pandemic and leaving anyone unprotected will only prolong the health crisis and harm economies more. I call
on all countries, companies and research institutions to support open data, open science and open collaboration so that all people can enjoy the benefits of science and research.
Finally we’re nearing the end of the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. This is one piece of good news. If there are no more cases the Government of the Democratic Republic of Congo could declare the outbreak over as early
as this Sunday. We’re not there yet and we remain in full response mode. We’re continuing to investigate alerts and to test samples.
This would not have been possible without the incredible health workers who have put themselves at risk for more than 18 months to stop this outbreak, just as health workers are putting themselves in danger to save lives from COVID-19. Health
workers in DRC faced the double threat of fighting a deadly virus in one of the world’s most dangerous and unstable regions, exposing themselves to Ebola and bullets.
Tomorrow, as you know, is WHO’s birthday, a day we celebrate each year as World Health Day. This year we’re paying tribute to the incredible contribution of all health workers, especially nurses and midwives. Nurses and midwives are the backbone of
every health system. They’re there from the first moments of life to the last. Tomorrow we’re publishing our first report on the state of the world’s nursing which highlights gaps and makes recommendations for all countries.
00:22:00
One of the lessons I hope the world learns from COVID-19 is that we must invest in health workers, not only to protect lives but also to protect livelihoods. I thank you.
TJ Thank you very much, Dr Tedros. Also, as always, we have Dr Mike Ryan and Dr Maria Van Kerkhove, who will be answering questions. We will now open the floor. I will go to one question
that I received by email this morning and I promised to answer; that’s Ankit Kumar from India Today. Ankit is asking; we have recently seen a spike in cases caused through religious gatherings in India, in fact almost a third of new cases
were linked to one gathering in India. We have also seen incidents of violence against health workers due to fear and misinformation. Is WHO concerned with these developments, what is WHO’s message to religious and community leaders and their
followers?
MR First and foremost the idea of violence against health workers is driven by fear and it’s driven by misunderstanding but it’s really unacceptable. We ask everyone and every community to see our health workers
as our heroes and to support them in every way we can.
With regard to gatherings of any type, be they religious or be they for other purposes, there are always risks associated with such gatherings in the midst of a major epidemic. WHO has issued guidance on that. Many of these gatherings
are now postponed or cancelled. We’ve been working very, very closely with religious and faith-based organisations all over the world including groups from the Islamic tradition, Christian
traditions and others and continue to work through faith-based organisations to communicate using our Epiwin platform.
00:24:21
We’re also continuing to develop guidance specifically for the holy month of Ramadan and are working through our Eastern Mediterranean regional office to be able to advise governments and religious institutions on how best to manage
the risks associated with such holy events.
But it’s very important again; having COVID-19 is not anybody’s fault. Every case is a victim and every case needs to be treated with sensitivity, as the health workers who treat them so it’s very important that we’re not profiling COVID-19
along racial, along religious, along ethnic lines. This is not helpful.
TJ Thank you very much. This was a question from Ankit Kumar from India Today. Now we will go to journalists online. We will start with Jamie from Associated Press. Jamie, can you hear us?
JA Hi, yes. Can you hear me? TJ Yes. Please go ahead.
JA Great, thank you very much. I wanted to ask you about… Over the weekend Dr Anthony Fauci mentioned that – if I understood it correctly – as much as 50% of transmission could be asymptomatic. Just aligned
with that, if you could give us a little bit more about what you’re thinking about the fact that some countries have said that this outbreak is more infectious than influenza. The CDC is saying that it’s up
to three times more infectious than influenza so what do you have to say about that? Thanks.
00:26:13
MK I’ll start and then perhaps Mike or DG would like to supplement. The modes of transmission and the way in which this virus is transmitted are of significant interest to all of us. What we are doing is working
with member states, we’re working with everyone that’s affected by this, looking through the research and trying to understand when most transmission is happening, when any transmission is happening.
What we know from reports, what we know from published literature is that the predominant way in which transmission is occurring is amongst symptomatic individuals and these are people that can be very early on in symptoms, even when they start
to feel a little bit unwell. This is supported by some data that attempts to catch a virus from individuals who are symptomatic.
We also know that it’s possible that people can transmit in the few days before they become symptomatic or in their pre-symptomatic phase. There have been some studies that have come out and we learned about this when we were on mission
in China back in January or early February, that there are individuals that can shed virus one to three days before they develop symptoms.
However it’s very important to note that even if you are pre-symptomatic or even if you don’t have any recognised symptoms you still have to transmit through droplets, you still have to have these infectious particles that come out
of your nose and your mouth. So while we know that that is possible we do not believe that it’s a major driver of transmission.
00:27:42
We’ve also seen modelling estimates that suggest that there’re large numbers of unrecognised transmission and I used unrecognised on purpose because I’m not saying asymptomatic. I’m saying that we may be missing people who are out there who are infected
but we’re missing them because of current surveillance strategies. That is certainly possible in many parts of the globe.
Whether or not those individuals are asymptomatic; we will have to wait until we see the results of serologic studies, which we hope we’ll be seeing in the coming days if not weeks.
So what we can say is that most people are transmitting this virus while they are symptomatic.
JA Hi, Jamie. Just in addition because I think – I would never in any way contradict my good friend, Tony Fauci, such an eminent man. There are many different estimations of what might represent asymptomatic
transmission or other infections in the community and we do know and everyone accepts that when the seroepidemiology studies do come online we will probably find more people who’ve been infected unknowingly; there’s no question of that.
The thing we need to address in all of this is very often the idea of severity versus infection and there is a huge association between the dose of exposure and the severity of infection. We see this in many other
infectious diseases so we also probably need to look at who is getting sick and very sick and is the dose and the type of exposure they’re getting different to those who may be exposed and seroconverted in the community.
00:29:26
So it’s not just a matter of looking at how many people in the community are infected but are there specific elements of exposure that cause individuals to have a higher dose of exposure or a specific route of exposure
that causes more severe infection? There is also that concept of infectious dose when we talk about the different types of transmission. If somebody is exposed to a high dose from another individual directly or from a surface that’s
heavily contaminated you can imagine the large dose.
In other circumstances individual particles or virus particles potentially floating through the air; it can be demonstrated that that may happen in certain circumstances, certainly in healthcare settings. But is that significant in
terms of driving infection, is that significant, does that produce an infectious dose that can successfully infect another individual?
These are all very important things that still need to be studied. Again we’re only a number of weeks into this. I think we need to have the seroepi studies. I think we need more information on what is the infectious dose and particularly
the relationship between the dose of exposure or infection and the severity of disease subsequently, which has been seen with many, many other diseases in the past including cholera, Ebola and others.
TJ Thank you very much, Mike and Maria. We will go now to our next question; that’s Kai Kupferschmidt. Kai, can you hear us?
00:31:01
KA Yes, Tarik. Thanks a lot for taking my question. I wanted to ask about the global push to try and find a pre-exposure prophylaxis or a post-exposure prophylaxis. I understand there’re
several trials going on, most of them with chloroquine or hydroxychloroquine. I was just wondering whether you can speak a little bit to what role this could potentially play.
Of course also there’re a lot of smaller studies going on. Is there any way to make sure that they all lead to results that can be proved in the end?
MR Maria can give you more detail but certainly one of the Solidarity trials – I think Solidarity 3 or 4 – we have one of the trials under design which will be a multi-centre study which will look at prophylaxis in healthcare workers to see whether there’s evidence that giving lower doses of drugs like chloroquine or hydroxychloroquine to healthcare workers would reduce their risk of becoming infected in a healthcare environment.
Those studies are certainly underway and again there are a number of those studies underway in smaller studies around the world but again as WHO we’re trying to bring together a larger set of collaborative studies that will give
us the answers we need.
In terms of post-exposure prophylaxis I don’t believe we have at the moment studies planned but Maria can speak to that but there is certainly evidence for the use of – not proven evidence of effectiveness but there are a number
of studies underway and trials underway that use hyperimmune globulin in the treatment of disease; in other words they use that purified plasma of recovered individuals to give an antibody boost to people who are
suffering the disease.
00:32:49
Similar approaches have been used in post-exposure prophylaxis for other diseases but Maria may be aware of studies underway in that area.
MK Only to add that, as you mentioned, there are a number of smaller studies that are happening globally and across a large number of countries. We have teams through our science division and through GOARN,
through the Global Outbreak Alert Network, who are pulling together available literature on a number of topics, one of which is looking at different types of therapeutics and drugs.
The idea is until we can have a study that pulls together enough of a sample size to get these answers to these questions we’re trying to evaluate every piece of evidence that is published so that we can look at the way in
which these studies were done, we can look at the strengths, we can look at the limitations so that can help guide us closer towards an effective treatment for COVID-19.
TJ Thank you very much. The next question is from BFM Radio. Is is Kate who is with us?
KT Yes, hi. Good evening or good morning. I’m from BFM Radio Malaysia. My question is, many countries around the world have imposed lock-downs or some sort of restrictions on movement. I was wondering
what WHO’s guidance would be; what’s the sweet spot, the kind of data that governments need to consider before lifting or relaxing some of these lock- downs? Thank you very much.
00:34:29
MR Thank you. It is a difficulty for governments right now because the lock-downs in many situations are proving effective in dampening the flames of the epidemic in those countries but those
lock-downs are also causing great economic hardship and everybody especially in the developing world needs to get to a more sustainable way of managing this epidemic and controlling COVID-19 without continuing to damage economic and social life.
The transition strategy out of lock-down requires a calibrated, step-wise approach. It would be probably very inadvisable just to lift a complete lock-down, all of the measures because lock-downs are a general term that
include closure of schools, closure of churches, stay-at- home orders, closure of workplaces. It’s a mixture of different things and I think each government needs to break out, what does our lock-down actually constitute, what are the elements
of our lock-down, where is that happening in the country, do we now understand the epidemiology of the disease in each area in which we have an element of lock-down or shut- down.
Then to chart the path out, you have to build strong public health capacity to take over from the lock-down. In other words the lock-down is pushing the disease down by putting people back in their homes, by separating communities. Once you raise
the lock-down you have to have an alternative method to suppress the infection. The way to do that is active case finding, testing, isolation of cases, tracking of contacts, quarantining of contacts and strong community education and
participation and ownership around normal physical distancing, hygiene and giving communities the power to control infection by in effect managing their own physical distance, managing their own capacities to support the response.
00:36:32
In that situation, if you’ve strong public health capacity, if you’ve got a community that’s mobilised and empowered and if you’ve strengthened your health system then you’re potentially in a position to start unlocking or unwinding the lock-down.
The specific parameters you need to be looking at are on two sides.
One is, it would be very inadvisable to lock down [sic] if the number of cases coming through the hospital is already at a level where your occupancy of beds is nearly at 100%. You need to be in a position where
you now have free beds in your system so that you’re managing and coping with the caseload and that means you have some absorption capacity left.
You need to look at things like the doubling rate; how many days does it take for the number of cases to double? You need to look at positivity rates; what proportion of all samples that we test are positive? You’ll see in
somewhere like Korea two to 6% of the samples they test are positive. Last week in New York 37% of tested samples were positive so you need to carefully look at what proportion of people you test are positive.
00:37:45
You need to look at the number of contacts that are generated per case and it goes on and on and WHO will be issuing guidance to countries that is a much more specific around the parameters they should be looking at. There are no absolutes here, there
are no answers, there are no numbers that say if this number is this then you do that. That doesn’t exist but what we can do is offer countries very specific measurements that they need to look at to chart the path out of lock-down.
That step-wise approach of unlocking somewhat and then waiting to see; I think you need to say, we will stop doing this element of the shut-down and then we will wait and we will look at the data and if that works we go to the next
stage and the next stage. So a careful, calibrated, step-wise exit from lock-down with putting in place public health capacities, putting in place community capacity, building the capacity of the health system to cope should the disease bounce back up; that’s the safe path out of lock-down.
We want to achieve it as quickly as possible and we want to avoid many countries going into that circumstance and we still have many countries around the world who are not in a locked- down situation. In fact their epidemiology would suggest
they can avoid the worst of this and we need to support them to avoid them going into that situation.
The most damaging lock-downs are in many developing countries where people – as the DG has said many times – can live from hand to mouth, not from pay cheque to pay cheque but from day to day and we have to find adaptive solutions
around lock-down and around disease control in vulnerable periurban populations living in poverty, in poor rural communities. We have to find alternative, adapted ways to manage lock-downs or slow-downs or shut-downs in
those situations.
00:39:41
TJ Thank you very much. This was Kate from BFM Radio in Malaysia. Now we will go to Nigeria to Natural Star and it’s Innocent. Innocent, can you hear us?
IN Thank you. Can you hear me?
TJ Not very well but we will try. Please go ahead.
IN Okay, thank you for taking my questions. I have two questions to ask. One; how will WHO assess African countries on what they’ve done concerning the lock-down and management of COVID-19?
Then the second one; there’s news going around that vaccines are to be tested on Africans when they’re developed. How true is that and is there a window that’s in the nearer future when a vaccine will be developed for COVID-19? Thank you.
Hello?
TJ Yes, we are just trying to make sure that we understood the question but we will try. MR I think this is Nigeria. Is it?
TJ Yes.
00:41:08
MR Maria may answer the question around vaccine development. With regard to our general assessment on lock-down – and the Director-General may wish to comment on this because he’s been speaking with many leaders in Africa
and, I believe, spoke with the whole of the African Union leadership and countries late last week so therefore is in a much better position than me to speak about that.
We would characterise so far, Africa’s actually doing well in this response thus far. Countries have essential capacities for testing, many countries are taking strong action and want to really focus on finding cases and doing contact tracing and trying to stop this disease becoming much more extensive given the fact that health systems are not as strong in many countries.
They need support in that though, they need support in testing, they need support with protective gear and they need to be given the resources to be able to mount those types of responses so I would characterise that Africa has not suffered the worst
of this pandemic so far. The worst of it can be avoided with very, very swift action to support those countries in Africa who really do want to take a comprehensive approach to this disease.
With the many vulnerable people including refugees and migrants who live in those countries it is our responsibility to provide that support but, DG, you may wish to speak about your interactions with the African
Union countries.
00:42:46
MK I’ll answer the question around vaccines. What we can say is that there are a number of vaccines that are in development and vaccines will be tested through clinical trials with all ethical considerations
in place in whichever populations are under study with informed consent, with open and transparent communication. This is of the utmost importance, that not only do we have strong, robust scientific evidence
but we ensure that all of the studies that are done are done with appropriate and the highest level of ethical considerations.
One thing on the first question around Africa is that there are a number of countries in Africa right now which have very few cases and Mike has alluded to this in his earlier response.
Some only have imported cases and there is an opportunity here, this window of opportunity that the DG has spoken about exists in many countries still. There is an opportunity to prevent the worst from happening
in a number of countries across Africa and across countries that are still seeing their first case; in some island countries.
We need to support those governments, those countries, all of the people in those areas to prevent the worst from happening, to prevent these individual cases from becoming clusters, these clusters from becoming community transmission. I think that’s
where we need to put a lot of emphasis and support so that we can prevent countries from reaching a point where they need to put in these very restrictive movement restrictions.
TAG Thank you. Thank you for that question, my brother from Nigeria. On the situation, as Mike said, of course when you see the number of cases the African continent has the lowest number of cases so far but that doesn’t mean that
the situation will not deteriorate. It may.
00:45:06
So Africa should do everything to prevent this situation from getting worse and that’s why African leaders are doing their best. I had a chance to participate in a meeting, a Leaders’ Coalition which was arranged or invited by the current Chairperson
of the African Union, the President of South Africa, President Ramaphoza and many leaders from all corners of the continent have actually participated.
The main agenda is to have a continental strategy and also make sure that that continental strategy helps the national strategy but in addition to a coalition of political leaders or the heads of state and government they have also agreed to have a coalition of business leaders. Business leaders in Africa are also getting together because Africa will need resources and one of the major problems that was identified during the discussion
was especially shortage of equipment starting from medical equipment, PPE and test kits and so on.
The leaders have agreed to look for concrete solutions to address the problem and they also believe that considering the number of cases we have in the continent testing cases, tracing contacts and isolating them, meaning using the comprehensive approach,
will actually help. They believe that lock-downs alone may not help or the physical distancing alone cannot help and they have agreed to do everything to follow the comprehensive approach.
From WHO’s side we have been supporting and we increased, improved the testing capacity in Africa significantly in the past two months and many countries in Africa have now testing capability although we may have a shortage of test kits but
we’re working on that too and we’re finding different ways of addressing the gap.
00:48:06
But we will support the African Union, we will support the Africa CDC and also we will continue working through our WHO regional office in Congo Brazzaville and continue to support and fight the pandemic together.
Then on the vaccines issue there was, I think, a comment last week from a couple of
scientists who said the testing ground for the new vaccines will be Africa. To be honest, I was so appalled and it was a time when I said, when we needed solidarity these kind of racist remarks actually would not help, it goes against the solidarity.
Africa cannot and will not be a testing ground for any vaccine. We will follow all the rules to test any vaccine or therapeutics all over the world using exactly the same rules. Whether it’s
in Europe, Africa or wherever we will use the same protocol and if there is a need to be tested elsewhere to treat human beings the same way, equally.
The hangover from a colonial mentality has to stop — and WHO will not allow this to happen. It was a disgrace actually and appalling to hear during the 21st century from scientists that kind of remark and we condemn
this in the strongest terms possible but we assure you that this will not happen in Africa and will not happen elsewhere, in any country. Proper protocols will be followed and human beings will be treated as human
beings because we’re all human beings.
00:50:37
Then after saying this the vaccine development; we’re addressing two issues and we will be announcing as soon as possible, hopefully during this week, a big initiative to accelerate the research and development and production of vaccines and also
design mechanisms for equitable distribution of the vaccines.
While we’re looking for vaccines, unless we break the barriers to equitable distribution of the products, whether it’s vaccines or therapeutics, we will have a problem, so we need to address the problem ahead of time, we need to address the problem
of access or challenges to access ahead of time.
That’s why we will put together a mechanism and we will appoint senior people from the North and South that will work out the details on how they can accelerate production but at the same time how they can ensure equitable distribution. Solidarity
is very important here. When a vaccine or a medicine is ready we have to be able to deliver it all over the world.
There should not be a divide between the haves and the have-nots.
If we say solidarity, solidarity should be in its full form and I hope each and every individual, each and every human being will go for that kind of solidarity. I thank you.
TJ Thank you, Dr Tedros. We’ll take a couple more questions. We go to Yang from Xinhua news agency. Yang, can you hear us?
00:52:58
YA Can I hear you?
TJ Yes, we can hear you. Please go ahead.
YA As World Health Day is approaching what do you have to say to the front-line medical workers in China and around the world in the global anti-virus efforts? This question is
for Dr Tedros. Thank you.
TJ If we understood well, the question is what is the message to health workers in China and around the world. Maybe you can repeat the question one more time, please.
YA Okay. As World Health Day is approaching what would you say and what message do you want to deliver to the front-line medical workers in China and around the world in the global anti-virus effort?
TAG I think I have said it earlier; as you know, this is the year of the nurse and the midwife, 2020. We were ready to celebrate it in a big way and it was supposed to be the main event in our
Assembly in mid-May. Unfortunately we’re in this situation but we will be launching a report tomorrow which is the first of its kind. It’s a report on the state of nursing. We will launch it tomorrow during the World Health
Day.
00:55:01
But while launching that report, although it’s about nursing, we will celebrate all health workers, midwives, pharmacists, doctors, you name it. I think the world is now seeing the importance and the central role that health workers play. People,
when they’re asked, of course, to choose they would say health first because it’s only when you’re healthy that you can aspire to anything, whether it’s wealth or fame or anything. It doesn’t matter if you’re not healthy.
If you’re not healthy the first thing you ask for is to get back your health and our health workers are making sure that happens and they’re central and very important for any individual. So not only during COVID but during other times too health
professionals are very important because they are safeguarding that very important aspect of life — that’s health.
So we have to celebrate them every day. Of course during COVID we can see to what extent they’re sacrificing. We have lost many of them. They’re dying while saving lives so my message first is to the public at large; that each and every individual
should recognise, whether it’s during normal times or pandemics like now, the role of health professionals and help them, protect them, really appreciate and respect what they are doing.
To the health workers, although especially during this COVID pandemic you’re working in a difficult situation you should know that your work is the most blessed one, your work is something special to the extent of losing your life
while helping others to live. We respect you and appreciate you for that and we also believe in you and that you will do everything to control this pandemic.
00:58:11
But you should know that you have – and the world understands – the most important job. We can see the humility which is coming from some leaders because of this pandemic. I know they’re seeing, starting from their own lives, the whole world through
a different prism and they will also see your role.
But the most important is not the recognition from the public or from leaders but the internal commitment and passion you have and believing that you’re doing the most blessed thing and you have all our respect and appreciation and we believe in
you, that together we will finish this pandemic. All the respect and appreciation we have to you, the greatest respect and appreciation ever. Thank you.
TJ Thank you very much, Dr Tedros. I think this important message will be heard from everyone and we will conclude this press briefing with these important words from Dr Tedros. We will
have an audio file available in the minutes to come and we invite you for our next briefing on Wednesday. Thank you.
TAG [Inaudible] and see you on Wednesday – tomorrow actually for the launch. Yes, see you tomorrow.
01:00:18
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