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Opening of the 71st World Health Assembly and 70 years of the WHO
In Geneva, Alain Berset opens the 71st World Health Assembly, the first under Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus as Director-General. The WHO is 70 years old. His speech traces the history of global health, from the first International Sanitary Conference in 1851 to the Spanish flu. He also names the failures: in the face of Ebola in West Africa, “the WHO’s response was not up to the task”.
In the afternoon, with the Afghan Minister of Public Health, Ferozuddin Feroz, he hosts an event on universal health coverage in emergencies, the central theme of the Assembly. Bilateral meetings are announced with France, Germany, Canada and Rwandan President Paul Kagame.
In the evening, Switzerland hosts a reception at the Palais des Nations for the WHO’s 70th anniversary. “The WHO stands for trust”, he says: in twenty-five years, deaths of children under five have fallen from more than twelve million to five and a half million a year, but 15,000 children still die every day.
Speeches on this site
- 71e Assemblée mondiale de la Santé (French-language page)
- Réception de la Suisse pour les 70 ans de l’OMS (French-language page)
Sources