COVID-19-Opening Remarks of WHO Executive Director at Media Briefing on July 10, 2020-World

Good Morning. Good Afternoon. Good Evening.

Today, WHO is launching an access initiative to quit tobacco aimed at helping 1.3 billion tobacco users around the world quit during a pandemic.

This initiative will help people have free access to the resources they need to quit smoking, including accessing digital health workers for nicotine replacement therapy and advice.

Smoking kills 8 million people a year, but if a user needs more motivation to quit this habit, a pandemic provides the right incentive.

Evidence reveals that smokers are more vulnerable to developing severe cases of COVID-19 than nonsmokers.

The project will be led by WHO with the United Nations Interagency Task Force on Noncommunicable Diseases and will bring together the technology industry, pharmaceutical and NGO partners such as PATH and the Alliance for Access to NCD Drugs and Products.

Thanks to Johnson & Johnson Consumer Health, our first manufacturing partner, for donating nearly 40,000 nicotine patches.

We can also introduce you to Florence, the world based on artificial intelligence, and Florence, WHO’s first digital health worker.

Florence dispels the myths about COVID-19 and cigarettes and helps people make plans to quit personally.

Florence is available 24/7 via video streams or text to give people access to trusted information.

Florence was created with technology developed by Soul Machines, a San Francisco and New Zealand based company, with the support of Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud.

WHO is in the final stages of adding partners and encourages pharmaceutical and technology companies to join this initiative to help reduce the risk of COVID-19 and lead a healthy life.

We will start this initiative in Jordan and roll it out globally for the next few months.

To elaborate on this initiative, I would like to introduce my sister Queen Queen Jordan.

Princess Dina is a long-time friend, president of the International Union of Cancer Controls, and a lifelong advocate of global tobacco control.

You have the floor of Princess Dina.

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Thanks to both Dina and Thibo Mongon.

Thank you very much for my sisters Princess Dina and Tibout.

Returning to COVID-19, the world recorded 12 million cases today.

In the last 6 weeks, the number of cases has more than doubled.

Throughout all walks of life, we are all tested to the limit. COVID-19 isn’t the only life-threatening threat to the poor, who have little or no access to quality healthcare.

All other illnesses, such as measles, polio, and malaria, all breed when vaccination is suspended and the drug supply chain is interrupted.

WHO will continue to work with partners to ensure that the poorest and most marginalized people are given priority.

This means resuming routine immunization so that medicines reach healthcare workers around the world.

There are still many things to do.

From countries that have seen rapid growth to where deregulation has taken place and where the number of incidents is starting to increase.

We need leadership, community participation, and collective solidarity.

Only positive action combined with domestic solidarity and global solidarity can circumvent this pandemic.

There are many examples around the world showing that, even if the outbreak is very intense, it can still be brought back under control.

And some of these examples show that even in Dharavi, a densely populated region of megacities in Italy, Spain, South Korea, and even Mumbai, community involvement and the inspection, tracking, and isolation of everything sick. , And the emphasis on the basis of treatment is the key to breaking the chain of transmission and controlling the virus.

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As we continue our pandemic efforts, we are also investigating the origin of the virus.

Two WHO experts are currently on their way to meet China

Learn about the advances in understanding animal reservoirs of COVID-19 with fellow scientists and how illness leapt between animals and humans.

This will help lay the groundwork for WHO-led international missions.

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For all the challenges posed by COVID-19, it also points to other challenges that threaten humanity.

The crisis of increased resistance to antibiotics is the slow-motion tsunami, and despite the rise in resistant infections, research and development of new antibiotics has not caught up.

Unless we take swift and lasting action, we risk the doomsday global scenario in which common injuries and illnesses return to becoming major murderers.

The AMR Action Fund aims to address this by strengthening and accelerating antibiotic research and development through innovative investments in biotechnology companies around the world.

Whether it’s COVID-19 or AMR, the best shot we have is to work together in national unity and global solidarity.

Thank you very much.