The World Health Organization’s (WHO) director general, Tedros Ghebreyesus, called for a pandemic treaty in response to an unknown “Disease X.”
“There are things that are unknown that may happen, and anything happening is a matter of when, not if, so we need to have a placeholder for that, for the diseases we don’t know,” he said.
“We lost many people [during COVID] because we couldn’t manage them,” Ghebreyesus continued. “They could have been saved, but there was no space. There was not enough oxygen. So how can you have a system that can expand when the need comes?”
“That agreement can help us to prepare for the future in a better way,” he asserted.
“The pandemic agreement can bring all the experience, all the challenges that we have faced and all the solutions into one,” Ghebreyesus added. “That agreement can help us to prepare for the future in a better way.”
“This is about a common enemy, and without a shared response, starting with preparedness, we will face the same problem as COVID.”
Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene said in response to the call for a pandemic agreement, “I’m a hard NO on the WHO World Pandemic Treaty for Disease X,” adding, “And while we are at it, why don’t we tell all these other freaks to stop spraying stuff in our skies, stop messing with our food, and stop creating monster bio weapon viruses that will murder everyone.”
American Faith reported that former World Health Organization (WHO) medical officer Doctor David Bell and Chair in Global Health Policy at the University of Leeds, Director of the World Health Organization Collaborative Centre on Health Systems and Health Security Professor Garrett Wallace Brown spoke to members of the All-Party Parliamentary Group (AAPG) regarding the WHO’s Pandemic Treaty and amendments to the International Health Regulations (IHR).
“The WHO was established in 1946 with the best of intentions, to help coordinate responses to major health issues and advise governments accordingly,” Bell told the APPG. “Over the decades we have seen a significant change in direction as funding streams have shifted to private ‘specified funding,’ particularly from private donors.”
He voiced his concerns: “It is a worrying background against which the IHR amendments and the Treaty are being negotiated.”
Pandemic Response and Recovery APPG Co-Chair Esther McVey said in response, “The Treaty and IHR amendments could cement a disastrous approach to future pandemics. It seems unwise to give an unelected and largely privately-funded supranational body, power over sovereignty and individual rights with seemingly no oversight.”
Co-Chair of AAPG Graham Stringer similarly stated, “I am opposed to these plans as they could represent a huge expansion of the WHO’s powers, to the detriment of public health.”
