The Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) and WHO right this moment signed a brand new Memorandum of Understanding, reaffirming the vital function that parliamentarians play in enabling good well being to foster steady and equitable societies.
The brand new five-year memorandum was signed by Mr Martin Chungong, IPU Secretary Common, and Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-Common, on the 148th IPU Meeting, which is going down in Geneva from 23 to 27 March 2024. Each organizations decide to proceed working collectively to advertise, present and defend the well being and well-being of all individuals, in all places. It renews a historic dedication made in 2018 to leverage their respective scientific and political mandates to handle persistent and rising challenges going through populations worldwide.
The memorandum reinforces vital areas of cooperation that align with international well being priorities, particularly common well being protection, international well being safety, well being promotion and lowering well being inequities, particularly in relation to sexual and reproductive well being and rights.
It additionally provides new cross-cutting areas of labor, together with responding to local weather change, assist to the government-led negotiations on a brand new pandemic settlement, and sustainable financing for well being. This consists of collaboration on this 12 months’s first WHO Funding Spherical to beat the historic imbalance between assessed and voluntary contributions, the distortions this creates, and the problems WHO faces with insufficiently predictable and versatile financing.
WHO Member States are staging their newest spherical of negotiations on a global settlement on pandemic prevention, preparedness and response earlier than scheduled consideration of a proposal for adoption on the 77th World Well being Meeting in Could 2024. The proposed settlement goals to offer a foundation for worldwide cooperation that was missing in the course of the COVID-19 pandemic. Parliaments are instrumental in supporting the method in the direction of adoption, in addition to in guiding the follow-up concerns at a nationwide stage.
Parliamentarians play an important function in setting insurance policies, prioritizing investments and guaranteeing accountability to advance public well being. Political management in service of the general public saves lives and protects well being by guaranteeing communities and nations are higher ready and designed to be more healthy and safer. WHO appears ahead to working even nearer with the IPU and parliamentarians worldwide to advance efforts to guard and promote individuals’s well-being, from negotiating a pandemic settlement to forestall a repeat of the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, to investing in common well being protection.”
Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-Common
Mr Martin Chungong, IPU Secretary Common, mentioned: “The COVID-19 pandemic was not an remoted incidence. One other pandemic will occur. It isn’t a query of if, however when. Parliaments have a key function, which is why we are going to proceed working with WHO in any respect ranges to boost consciousness amongst parliamentarians on the pandemic settlement and different international well being processes; to present parliamentarians entry to technical experience and data; and to assist them to pursue their nationwide well being priorities and again them with the mandatory laws and assets.”
Milestones of the IPU and WHO’s earlier collaboration embody a landmark IPU decision in 2019 on reaching common well being protection, various sensible assets for parliamentarians comparable to a current handbook on common well being protection, and quite a few occasions which have introduced collectively well being specialists and parliamentarians.
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