Day: February 8, 2023

SECRETARY BLINKEN: Mary Beth, thank you very much, and good morning, good afternoon, good evening. It’s great to see so many friends and colleagues on the screen today. Thank you so much for joining the fourth and actually final COVID-19 Global Action Plan Ministerial meeting.

So we created this campaign almost exactly a year ago, with a pandemic disrupting the lives and livelihoods of virtually everyone on our planet. We came together appreciating that foreign ministries and multilateral institutions have a critical role to play in coordinating and prioritizing this challenge across borders and across bureaucracies, because we know that a pandemic is not just a health crisis – it’s a security crisis; it’s an economic crisis; it’s a humanitarian crisis. Health security is national security.

We launched the Global Action Plan as an intensive 12-month effort – mobilizing over 33 countries as well as the European Union, the African Union, the World Health Organization – to help lead the world out of the acute phase of COVID-19. And thanks to the work of so many of you, along with NGOs, the private sector, our health and frontline workers, we’ve made significant headway.

We know the pandemic is not over, but we have reached what the WHO considers a transition point. While COVID will be with us for the foreseeable future, we have dramatically reduced global deaths and severe illness. We’ve managed the effects of COVID through increasingly available vaccines and treatments, and we’re figuring out how to apply lessons from this pandemic to enhance health security going forward.

Across all six lines of effort that we laid out a year ago, our progress has been impressive and, in some cases, remarkable. First and foremost, this group has helped get shots into arms, with nearly 64 percent of people around the world having completed their first two doses. Greater coordination through GAP has also strengthened supply chains and improved distribution to some of the most remote corners of the world – whether shipping supplies like syringes where they’re desperately needed, or inventing new cold chain storage solutions, as Japan so innovatively did. We combatted misinformation and disinformation, hosting local information sessions to address misperceptions and help skeptical communities appreciate that vaccines are safe and beneficial. GAP has also taken steps to support health workers on the frontlines, from providing personal protective equipment to getting those workers vaccinated.

Today, nearly 90 percent of health workers around the world are fully vaccinated, and greater protection for our health workers means that they’re able to better care for others. We’re also strengthening testing and treatment to ensure that those at the highest risk can get tested as soon as they develop symptoms and rapidly receive medication and care if needed. That includes partnering with the private sector in places like South Africa to make medical oxygen more affordable.

Finally, we’re working to strengthen global health security. That means improving our collective early warning systems for detecting diseases, speeding up production and distribution of vaccines, PPE, and tests. It means negotiating a pandemic accord with other WHO members, as well as boosting financing for preparedness like with the new pandemic fund that the World Bank and the WHO are putting together. The United States has already pledged $450 million to that fund, and we’ll be looking to other nations, including many of you, for your contributions and your leadership.

Taken together, we’re building a world better prepared to prevent, detect, and respond to the next pandemic, and to do so quickly, effectively, and equitably, because an equitable approach is both the right thing to do and the smart thing to do.

Despite all of this progress, we know that real challenges remain. Too many older and immunocompromised people are not getting vaccines or antiviral treatments, and new variants an unanticipated obstacles could of course set us back. The world cannot succumb to the cycle of panic and neglect that we saw with Ebola in 2014 and Zika in 2016. We like to say that this time is different. Now, we actually have to prove it.

In the long term, we need to institutionalize the role that foreign ministries played in the COVID response and apply it to our continued efforts to strengthen health security. The pandemic underscored that we have to confront these shared challenges together. GAP showed that we are capable of doing that. Now, I think it’s on us to try to maintain the momentum to safeguard the health of our people, to save lives.

As we open today’s discussion, I simply want to say this: Thank you. Thank you to all of you for your engagement – and especially the countries that have served as ministerial cohosts: Japan, Bangladesh, Botswana, and Spain. And now I look forward to hearing from everyone else. Thanks so much.

Mary Beth, back to you.

Source: US State Department

ANKARA/DAMASCUS – The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) is on the ground responding to the devastating impact of the two earthquakes that hit Türkiye and Syria on Monday. WFP food assistance has been underway since Tuesday with plans to reach half a million people in both countries.

As of Wednesday morning, WFP had reached nearly 64,000 people in urgent need of food assistance, providing ready-to-eat food rations, family food packages and hot meals. The food being distributed requires no cooking and provides immediate relief for families whose precarious position is made worse by freezing temperatures.

In southeast Türkiye – the area closest to the quakes’ epicentre – WFP is coordinating with authorities to provide family food packages to people in temporary camps. The camps already house around 44,000 Syrians under temporary protection and now include newly displaced Turkish nationals. WFP is delivering family food packages to 17,000 affected people in camps in the southeast.

In areas where supermarkets and supply chains are struggling because of damaged infrastructure, WFP will provide family food packages to Turkish nationals for 1-2 weeks while services stabilize.

WFP will also support municipalities in the southeast to reactivate and expand soup kitchens set-up during the COVID-19 pandemic to provide daily hot meals to quake-affected families. WFP is working closely with the Turkish Red Crescent and partners.

In Syria, WFP and its local partners have delivered ready-to-eat rations and daily hot meals to 38,000 affected people in shelters.

“The world woke up to devastating news on Monday. A region plagued by years of compounding crises, faces yet another one, with unimaginable loss and destruction. Immediate relief cannot be delayed,” said WFP Regional Director in the Middle East, Northern Africa and Eastern Europe Corinne Fleischer. “WFP’s strong footprint in both countries enabled us to immediately mobilize our staff, logistics capacity and partners to respond to people’s most immediate food needs.”

In northwest Syria, the quakes have further complicated an acute humanitarian crisis, in which 4.1 million people – or 90% of the population – already depend on humanitarian assistance. Of these, close to 3 million people have been displaced by conflict – often more than once – and despite the freezing temperatures still live in tents, makeshift shelters, or abandoned buildings.

WFP has enough ready-to-eat food inside northwest Syria to assist 125,000 people and is providing this to local partners. WFP has already provided partners with food for 30,000 people. Millions of Syrians depend on United Nations cross-border assistance from Turkey, which is enabled by a Security Council resolution.

“WFP continues to appeal for unimpeded access to northwest Syria – now more than ever – when humanitarian assistance is urgently needed to reach those affected by the quake. Nature has sadly affected those who already had to face years of compounded suffering and displacement,” added Fleischer.

Each month, WFP assists 5.5 million people across all of Syria. However, the programme is now only 30 percent funded and WFP faces the prospect of cutting up to 70 percent of the beneficiaries from July onwards should additional funding not materialize on time.

WFP is committed to working with its partners to bring life-saving assistance to families affected by the earthquakes in Türkiye and Syria. To meet the urgent food needs, WFP is appealing for US$46 million for a total of 500,000 people in Türkiye and Syria. This includes hot meals and food rations to 200,000 newly displaced people in Syria and 300,000 people in Türkiye, including 70,000 refugees and internally displaced people.

WFP mourns all the lives lost in this tragedy, including one of its own staff members.

Source: World Food Programme

ECDoH welcomes the sentencing of a former employee for personal protective equipment tender fraud

The Eastern Cape Department of Health welcomes the sentencing of a former employee for Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) tender fraud by the Mthatha Specialised Commercial Crimes Court.

The former employee has been sentenced to 10 years imprisonment on charges of fraudulently awarding a R23.7-million PPE tender to a private company.

The sentencing sends a strong message that pepatrators of crime will face the full might of the law when found guilty of the such criminal behaviour.

This is also an important milestone for government and serves as a deterrent to other officials who still have intensions to defraud government.

Crime never pays and the consequences are dire for both the perpetrator and those who depend on him/her.

MEC for Health Nomakhosazana Meth said the sentencing was in line with the department’s zero-tolerance for wrongdoing.

“This sentencing shows that the days of people escaping with a slap on the wrist are gone. Corruption and fraud is a cancer to society that must be rooted out.

“We are happy that wrongdoers are not engaging in their deeds with impunity. When the fraud was brought to the department’s attention, we acted swiftly and alerted law enforcement agencies,” she said.

Just to note, this was not a tender awarded by the department. The individual forged an award appointment letter but there was no loss to the department.

The incident happened during the time when the country was under the State of Dissaster, wherein emergency procurement processes were established.

The controls put in place by the Department helped in preventing any irregular expenditure as a result of the fraudulent transaction.

It was during the period when government was working tirelessly to reduce Covid-19 infections and deaths when the perpetrator used his proximity to the system to commit the fraud.

The Head of Department of Health, Dr Rolene Wagner, concurs with the sentiments of the MEC and expressed appreciation for the SIU and this positive outcome.

“This is evidence of the effectiveness of the collaboration between the SIU and the Department, following the Presidential Proclamation. The department will cooperate with all investigative and law enforcement agencies in the pursuit of eliminating fraud and corruption” Wagner said.

‘We have strengthened our SCM Controls and the Department’s in-year irregular expenditure of under R3m, has decreased by over 96% compared to the prior year” she concluded.

Source: Government of South Africa