The Right Honourable Gordon Brown, my friend, fellow honorary graduate and former Prime Minister – in that order of importance,
Chancellor Dame Katherine Grainger,
Principal and Vice-Chancellor Professor Sir Anton Muscatelli,
Dear students, faculty, colleagues and friends,
Good evening, it’s wonderful to be in Glasgow.
I am deeply honoured and humbled, but also very proud, to be awarded an honorary degree by the University of Glasgow – a university with such a rich heritage, including in science and medicine.
As many of you know, it was here at the University of Glasgow, in 1837, that James McCune Smith became the first African-American to receive a university medical degree, having been denied admission to universities in the United States because of his race.
Then there is Marion Gilchrist, who became the first woman in Scotland to graduate in medicine, in 1894;
John Macintyre, who opened the world’s first x-ray department, in 1896;
And Ian Donald, who gave the world its first ultrasound image of a foetus, in 1958.
I was also very impressed to read that the University has produced no fewer than three Prime Ministers, three First Ministers and seven Nobel laureates, including John Boyd Orr, the first scientist to demonstrate a link between poverty, poor diets and ill health, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1949;
And Professor Robert Edwards, who co-established the world’s first IVF clinic in 1980, and was awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 2010.
I was also astonished to discover that Albert Einstein was awarded an honorary degree and delivered his first lecture on relativity here at the University of Glasgow.
So Gordon, my friend, we are in good company.
There is another alumnus of this university who is less well-known, but is very dear to our hearts at WHO: Dima Alhaj, from Gaza.
Dima was a Masters student here in Glasgow in 2018 and 19, as part of the Erasmus exchange programme. She returned to Gaza, where she joined WHO, working as a patient administrator at the Limb Reconstruction Centre.
Dima was killed in November, alongside her husband, their six-month old son, her two brothers and dozens of other members of her family and community, when the house in which they were seeking shelter was bombed. She was 29.
This afternoon I met Roseann Maguire, a research associate in mental health and well-being here at the university, whose family hosted Dima for two months in 2018.
Dima’s death is a huge loss for Roseann, as it is for her WHO family – and it gives us even more reason to work every day to alleviate the suffering of the people of Gaza, in any way we can.
Dima was the person she was in part because of her time here at the University of Glasgow, which shaped her life as it has shaped the lives of so many people for more than 570 years.
I am pleased to see that the university continues to build on its rich heritage, with leading research in precision medicine and chronic diseases, One Health and addressing inequalities.
On the subject of chronic diseases, I’d like to take this opportunity to thank the Scottish Government for providing funds for the next five years to support the Health4Life Fund, a joint initiative between WHO, UNICEF and the UN Development Programme, to catalyse action on noncommunicable diseases and mental health in low- and middle-income countries.
Noncommunicable diseases, or NCDs including cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular and respiratory disease, are the world’s leading cause of premature mortality. And 86% of premature deaths from NCDs occur in low- and middle-income countries, largely because of the inequalities those populations face in accessing the care and medicines that are more easily accessible in high-income countries.
Indeed, most global health challenges are not challenges of science or medicine. They are challenges of inequality and inequity: poverty, marginalization, disadvantage, remoteness.
Equity has been at the heart of WHO’s mission since it was created in 1948. Our Constitution says that health is a fundamental human right of all people, without distinction.
And equity has been the driving force of my work.
One of the first countries I visited outside Ethiopia was Denmark, where I was a student in the late 1980s, and where for the first time in my life, I had health insurance.
I couldn’t believe that even as a foreigner, I had access to health services, free of charge.
I had the same experience during my Masters in London and my PhD in Nottingham, when I was a beneficiary of the NHS.
Those experiences were very influential in shaping my commitment to universal health coverage – the idea that all people can access the health services they need, without financial hardship.
Equity is also at the heart of the pandemic agreement that countries are now negotiating at WHO, building on the lessons of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The pandemic exposed and exacerbated the vast inequities that are at the root of so many global health challenges.
The development of vaccines in record time was a triumph of science.
But before a single vaccine had reached an arm, high-income countries had used their financial muscle to pre-order most of the world’s supply.
Lower-income countries were left behind, waiting for scraps.
Of course, this was not a complete surprise.
When HIV first erupted, there was a 10-year gap between the richest and the poorest countries getting access to lifesaving drugs.
When the H1N1 influenza pandemic struck in 2009, vaccines were developed, but by the time poorer countries got access, the pandemic was over.
Similar stories can be told for access to medicines for cancer, diabetes, hepatitis C, rare diseases and more, where the prices set by manufacturers put them out of reach for lower-income countries – very often for products that were developed initially in public research institutes.
Anticipating a similar scenario, WHO joined partners early in the COVID-19 pandemic to establish COVAX, to facilitate equitable access to vaccines – and I’d like to thank my friend Prime Minister Gordon Brown for being such a strong and vocal advocate for COVAX, and for vaccine equity more generally.
Together, WHO and our partners distributed almost 2 billion free doses of vaccine to 146 countries.
In lower-income countries, COVAX represented 75% of vaccine supply, saving an estimated 2.7 million lives.
It helped us to reach the world’s poorest and most vulnerable faster than we would have otherwise.
But not fast enough. There is no doubt that the delays in reaching lower-income countries and communities with vaccines cost lives.
We cannot allow the same thing to happen next time.
And there will be a next time. History teaches us that the next pandemic is a matter of when, not if.
It may be caused by an influenza virus, or a new coronavirus, or it may be caused by a new pathogen we don’t even know about yet – which is what we refer to as Disease X.
There’s been a lot of attention on Disease X recently, but in fact, it’s not a new thing.
We first used the term Disease X in 2018 as a placeholder for an as-yet-unknown disease for which we can nonetheless prepare.
COVID-19 was a Disease X – a new pathogen causing a new disease.
But there will be another Disease X, or a Disease Y or a Disease Z.
And as things stand, the world remains unprepared.
If a new pandemic began tomorrow, we would face many of the same problems we faced with COVID-19.
To be sure, in response to the lessons COVID-19 taught us, WHO, our Member States and our partners have established several initiatives to make the world safer from future pandemics.
For example, working with the World Bank, we have established the Pandemic Fund, to support countries to strengthen their pandemic preparedness and response capacities;
To increase regional production of vaccines, we have established the mRNA Technology Transfer Hub in South Africa and a Global Training Hub for Biomanufacturing in the Republic of Korea;
To improve the world’s ability to detect signals of outbreaks faster, we have set up a new WHO centre for collaborative intelligence in Berlin;
To strengthen international sharing of biological samples and sequences, we established the WHO BioHub in Switzerland;
And we’re also working on a new mechanism for more equitable access to medical countermeasures including vaccines, tests and treatments.
There are several other initiatives, including the Global Health Emergency Corps, the Universal Health and Preparedness Review, which is a peer review mechanism, the International Pathogen Surveillance Network, and the Preparedness and Resilience for Emerging Threats Initiative.
But there is one key missing ingredient.
One of the biggest deficiencies of the COVID-19 pandemic was the lack of global coordination and cooperation between countries.
It was, in many ways, an every-country-for-itself response.
While sovereign governments have the responsibility to protect their people, a global threat demands a coordinated global response, in which countries work together to keep themselves and each other safe.
Indeed, that’s exactly what the countries of the world have done in response to numerous global threats since the end of the Second World War.
For example, since the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control came into force nearly two decades ago, smoking has decreased by 20% globally.
Likewise, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Paris Agreement have brought countries together to make binding, concrete commitments to reach concrete targets to reduce emissions and limit global warming.
There are numerous other examples: the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty; the Geneva Conventions; the UN Charter and the WHO Constitution itself.
All are binding agreements in international law to meet common threats with a common response.
So surely it makes sense for countries to agree on a common response to the common threat of pandemics – a risk that is increasing every day with environmental degradation, climate change, and the ever-present risks of zoonotic spillover.
It’s for that reason that in December 2021, WHO’s Member States met in Geneva and agreed to develop an international agreement on pandemic preparedness and response – a legally-binding pact to work together to keep themselves and each other safe.
When they started on this journey, countries set themselves a deadline of completing the agreement in time for adoption at the World Health Assembly in May of this year.
That’s now just 11 weeks away.
However, there are currently two major obstacles to meeting that deadline.
The first is a group of issues on which countries have not yet reached consensus.
They’re making progress, but there are still areas of difference that need further negotiation, and give and take.
None of them are insurmountable. If countries listen to each other’s concerns, I am confident they can find common ground and a common approach.
The second major barrier is the torrent of fake news, lies, and conspiracy theories about the pandemic agreement:
That it’s a power grab by WHO;
That it will give WHO power to impose lockdowns or vaccine mandates on countries, or stop travel;
That it’s an “attack on freedom”.
These claims, as you know, are completely false.
WHO does not have the power to impose anything on anyone. We don’t want it, and we’re not trying to get it.
The agreement has been written by countries, for countries, and will be implemented in countries in accordance with their own national laws, just like other international agreements.
And just like other international agreements, it won’t give WHO any power over sovereign states.
The tobacco convention does not give WHO any power over national tobacco policies, nor the power to stop anybody smoking.
The Paris Agreement does not give the UN power over national policies on climate or energy.
This agreement is about international cooperation, sharing information, and increasing the equitable distribution of life-saving tools to stop the next pandemic.
We can’t know when the next pandemic will be, or how mild or severe it might be. But we can be prepared.
This morning, I had the opportunity to visit the Glasgow Botanic Garden with my family. During that visit, I read that in 1832, a cholera epidemic killed 3000 Glaswegians.
Then in a nearby greenhouse a few steps away, I saw a sign on the wall asking visitors to maintain distance to prevent transmission of COVID-19.
Two public health emergencies almost 200 years apart. So much has changed in that time, but much hasn’t.
As Albert Camus said, “There have been as many plagues as wars in history, yet always plagues and wars take people equally by surprise.”
We must not be taken by surprise next time. And to not be surprised, we need to be prepared.
As the generation that lived through COVID-19, we have a collective responsibility to protect future generations from the suffering we endured.
Because pathogens have no regard for the lines humans draw on maps, nor for the colour of our politics, the size of our economies or the strength of our military.
For everything that makes us different, we are one humanity, the same species, sharing the same DNA and the same planet.
We have no future but a common future.
Once again, I offer my deep gratitude to you, Dame Katherine, and the University of Glasgow for the great honour you have given me today.
I accept it proudly, not only on my own behalf, but also on behalf of my family, the incredible people I am privileged to call my colleagues – people like Dima Alhaj, who work around the world every day, sometimes in very difficult and dangerous situations – to make it a healthier, safer and fairer place.
I thank you.