WHO Director-General's remarks at the G20 Joint Finance Health Taskforce side event - Improving economic resilience to pandemics: from vision to action on the role of enhanced[...]

First, my thanks to Indonesia, Italy, Japan and the United States for co-convening this event, and our friends at the World Bank and to Elizabeth Cousens and her team at the UN Foundation for hosting us this morning.

My thanks also to the Brazil G20 Presidency, and to Italy and Indonesia as Co-Chairs of the Joint Finance-Health Taskforce, for their continued leadership.

The Taskforce was established to improve coordination between health and finance including assessing and addressing health emergencies with cross border impact and encouraging effective stewardship of resources for pandemic preparedness, prevention and response.

WHO is proud to host the Task Force Secretariat, with the support of the World Bank. Thank you to all G20 members for your support of the Secretariat and its head Serina Ng.

The COVID-19 pandemic hit the poorest and most vulnerable the hardest. Almost 100 million people were pushed into poverty.

The analysis and joint work between the WHO and the World Bank supports the assessment of targeted policy measures, to identify what specific investment in pandemic preparedness and response should be priortized to reduce risks and costs.

That includes through better planning and understanding of the impact of timely access to finance, which is essential to addressing the dire inequalities we witnessed during the pandemic. Of course, each pandemic will be unique, but we must be determined to avoid the impacts on the poorest.

Exercises such as pandemic scenarios are also important opportunities to understand how we can better plan and prepare for the future.

This exercise included inputs on isolation, bed capacity, and vaccination, but also incorporated access to finance and the constraints that had on policy response.

The outcomes of the exercise are important for informing pandemic preparedness and response planning, international coordination, financing, and equitable access to medical countermeasures.

The work of the Task Force is an important component of the broader work to strengthen the global health architecture, including the pandemic agreement, the amendments to the International Health Regulations, and many other initiatives.

It is mission critical that all efforts are complementary instead of creating fragmentation of the health architecture.

Once again, my thanks to Brazil for driving this work forward under its G20 Presidency.

We look forward to our continued partnership with all of you to help all countries be better prepared for the next pandemic.

I thank you.

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