ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Germany's health minister on Monday stated that the world is not prepared for a new pandemic, stressing the need for talks to find solutions for global health issues, a call echoed by other health officials at the World Health Summit (WHS) in Berlin.
“We are in an era where health issues are a hot topic in politics, but they are not getting solved. We are not fully prepared to tackle the next worldwide pandemic," Karl Lauterbach, Germany’s federal minister of health, told Rudaw’s Alla Shally on the sidelines of the WHS.
The World Health Summit 2023 under the theme "A Defining Year for Global Health Action" began on Sunday in the German capital of Berlin and will come to a close on Tuesday. The summit covered a range of health-related topics, gathering over 4,000 attendees in person and 60,000 online.
Lauterbach stressed that due to climate change, more pandemics are anticipated, emphasizing that actors such as the United Nations and the World Health Organization (WHO), as well as countries such as the US and Germany, are actively mobilizing resources and funds to prepare for this possibility.
Lauterbach’s opinions were echoed by WHS President Axel Pries, who highlighted that the world’s preparedness to deal with a pandemic like COVID-19 is also undermined by global political tensions.
“Everyone says that if such a threat presents itself again, it will be worse than before,” Pries told Rudaw, noting that international tensions are high and trust between “some countries” is low.
The President of the WHS said that an international agreement must be reached for the world to be better prepared for a new pandemic.
Pries expressed concern that the world may not react in time to the threat of climate change, noting that some countries tend to conceal the issue of global warming.
The WHO declared the COVID-19 outbreak a global emergency in January 2020 and a global pandemic in March of the same year, leading countries around the world to impose mandatory lockdowns and close borders. The virus killed nearly seven million people worldwide with more than 765 million recorded cases, according to WHO data.
