WHO opens pandemic early warning center in Germany
Berlin, Sep 1 (EFE).- The World Health Organization (WHO) on Wednesday opened in Germany a center aiming to prepare the world for future pandemics via collecting and analyzing massive amounts of data.
WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom and German Chancellor Angela Merkel attended the pandemic early warning hub’s inauguration ceremony in Berlin.
“The world needs to be able to detect new events with pandemic potential and to monitor disease control measures on a real-time basis to create effective pandemic and epidemic risk management,” said Adhanom.
“We need to better connect researchers, collect and analyze data, and offer advice to many countries,” Merkel said.
The German chancellor maintained her opposition to suspending patent protection for Covid-19 vaccines and instead voiced her support for transferring knowledge and granting licenses to boost production capacity across the world.
Michael Ryan, the executive director of WHO’s health emergency program, explained that the hub is “designed to develop the data access, analytic tools and communities of practice to fill these very gaps, promote collaboration and sharing, and protect the world from such crises in the future.”
The idea of the center first came up during a meeting between Merkel and Adhanom 10 months ago.
jpm/smq/mp
