Extract below and a comment from me. Read online: https://hq_who_departmentofcommunications.cmail19.com/t/d-e-wlilyuk-hldd...
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The letter by President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Federative Republic of Brazil, and Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General, World Health Organization, is being issued on the occasion of the G7 Summit.
15 June 2026 |Statement|
Dear Leaders of the G7, the G20, BRICS and of all nations,
We write to you together, from Geneva and from Brasília, with one shared conviction: that the world must finish what it started, and that you can help it do so.
We begin not with an institution or an annex, but with a memory the whole world shares. Not so long ago, our hospitals overflowed. Families said goodbye to the people they loved through glass, or by telephone, or not at all. Children lost grandparents. Doctors and nurses, exhausted beyond anything we had a right to ask of them, kept going anyway. Estimates from WHO and others put the lives lost at up to twenty million. Humanity promised itself, in the rawness of that grief, that it would not face such a day again unprepared.
A little over a year ago, the world kept the first part of that promise. After the deadliest pandemic in a century, the nations of the world chose cooperation over division and adopted the WHO Pandemic Agreement to strengthen how countries can work together to prevent, prepare for, and respond to pandemics. In a divided world, that outcome was not to be taken for granted. It was an act of hope, and an act of faith in one another. We write to you now because that hope is not yet fulfilled, and because it lies within your hands to help fulfil it.
One piece remains. To respond to future pandemics in time, countries must be able to quickly identify pathogens with pandemic potential and share their genetic information and material so scientists can develop tools: the tests, the treatments, the vaccines that decide who lives and who does not. The system that makes this possible, fairly and on equal footing, is the Pathogen Access and Benefit-Sharing annex. It is the last piece of the puzzle, not only for the Pandemic Agreement but for everything WHO and Member States have built from the hard lessons of COVID-19. Until it is finished, the Agreement cannot enter into force. The promise stays unkept...
With respect, and in the shared cause of protecting human life,
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva
President
Federative Republic of Brazil
Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus
Director-General
World Health Organization
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COMMENT (NPW): A few weeks ago we noted a news article titled 'Comms should come from the brain not the heart, says ex-WHO comms chief', referring to Gabriella Stern, former head of WHO communications. I argued that there is a place for both and gave a statement5 on Ebola from Dr Tedros that same day as an example of a heart-felt (and evidence-based) communication. The title of the news article is perhaps misleading as she is quoted as saying: “A lot of what we’re doing in communications is coming from the gut and from the heart, and it needs to actually come from the data and evidence”, which is not quite the same. I suspect that Stern did not intend to exclude 'the heart' totally, but was more likely to be advocating for more rigour. The communication from Luis da Silva and Dr Tedros is coming from 'the brain' and 'the heart' and is all the more compelling for it.
Best wishes, Neil
HIFA profile: Neil Pakenham-Walsh is coordinator of HIFA (Healthcare Information For All), a global health community that brings all stakeholders together around the shared goal of universal access to reliable healthcare information. HIFA has 20,000 members in 180 countries, interacting in four languages and representing all parts of the global evidence ecosystem. HIFA is administered by Global Healthcare Information Network, a UK-based nonprofit in official relations with the World Health Organization. Email: neil@hifa.org