'Our Message To All Countries Is Clear' WHO Calls For Unified Global Effort As Coronavirus Surges

by Andrea Germanos, staff writer

While U.S. President Donald Trump openly rejects expert opinion on how to stop the coronavirus, the World Health Organization on Wednesday implored global governments to back a coordinated effort to save lives at risk from the pandemic and show "solidarity in the face of this threat to all of humanity."

"Our message to all countries is clear," said WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, "heed this warning now, back this plan politically and financially today, and we can save lives and slow the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic."

"History will judge us on how we responded to the poorest communities in their darkest hour.

Let’s act together, right now!"-@DrTedros #COVID19 #coronavirus

— World Health Organization (WHO) (@WHO) March 25, 2020

The WHO chief's appeal came at a press conference Wednesday kicking off the United Nation's Global Humanitarian Response Plan, an interagency blueprint (pdf) to address the coronavirus that calls for $2 billion in funding and centers the needs of those most vulnerable.

The virus has now spread across the globe—infecting as of Wednesday an estimated 450,000 people, killing 20,000 people, and forcing one-third of the world's inhabitants to be under lockdown—but the health, societal, and economic impacts of COVID-19 are felt unequally and threaten to exacerbate already existing inequalities and injustices.

As Ghebreyesus and Mark Lowcock, the U.N. under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs, wrote in an op-ed published Tuesday at the Washington Post:

The coronavirus is now reaching places where people live in war zones, cannot easily get their hands on soap and clean water, and have no hope of a hospital bed if they fall critically ill.

If countries with strong healthcare systems are buckling under the pressure of coronavirus outbreaks, imagine what will happen in countries beset by deep humanitarian crises caused by war, natural disasters, and climate change.

"People and communities that are already uprooted due to conflict, displacement, the climate crisis or other disease outbreaks are the ones we must urgently prioritize"-@DrTedros #COVID19 #coronavirus

— World Health Organization (WHO) (@WHO) March 25, 2020

Such factors underscored the need for the humanitarian plan, which lays out six key action points. The WHO summed them on Twitter:

"6 we need to protect the health and humanitarian supply chain so that our frontline workers are protected and able to travel freely as they give lifesaving care"-@DrTedros #COVID19 #coronavirus

— World Health Organization (WHO) (@WHO) March 25, 2020

U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres, writing in the foreword to the response plan, emphasized the critical need for global cooperation.

"This is a moment for the world to come together to save lives and fight a common threat," he wrote. "The only war we should be waging is the war against COVID-19."

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