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Remarks as Delivered by the Honorable Michael O. Leavitt Secretary of Health and Human Services at WHO Plenary SessionMr. President, Honorable Ministers, colleagues, and friends. Like all of you, my good friend, Dr. Lee, is on my mind. I had the opportunity to learn something about what makes him such a great leader of the WHO. Dr. Lee shared with me how his country was torn apart by war when he was just a young boy. His father had to go into hiding, and for more than three months, he and his mother walked miles and miles, during the cold of winter, to find his father. Having experienced hardship at an early age, he dedicated his whole life to improving the human condition. Dr. Lee's visionary leadership and cooperative spirit has strengthened the WHO and its role in the global health community. Today, I want to express our sadness and the respect for Dr. Lee by the President of the United States. I want to express our sympathies to his family. For me, I have lost a friend, and my country has too. There are many important issues for this Assembly to address. Infectious diseases, including HIV/AIDS and malaria, continue to cause worldwide suffering and demand our continued commitment and resources. Conquering disease requires an exchange of information and research across the world; a strong system of intellectual property; and incentives to promote further private-sector investment. But today, I want to focus our attention on the threat of a human influenza pandemic-what we in the United States are doing to prepare and what we, as a world community, can do together. Our Nation is mobilizing. At President Bush's direction, I have been traveling to each of our 50 States to meet with local leaders to encourage preparation. Over the past 150 days, we have nearly completed all the summits. Collectively, more than 20,000 leaders have attended. States and local communities are developing preparedness plans and exercising them. At the national level, we have been making significant investments in vaccines, antivirals, and research. This research is likely to benefit not only citizens of the United States, but also citizens of the world. I recently awarded $1.0 billion in contracts to develop cell-based vaccines against both seasonal and pandemic influenza. Our goal is to develop a library of live vaccine candidates against all known influenza strains with pandemic potential. We are working on dose-sparing measures to enable us to produce more treatment courses for more people. And, we have developed rapid diagnostic testing for H5 strains that shorten testing time. We are also looking at mitigation strategies should a pandemic break out. But responding to a pandemic will demand the cooperation of the world community. No nation can go it alone. If the people of the world are to be protected, we must all pledge to follow four principles of pandemic preparedness:
We are funding the Specimen Transport Fund, managed by the WHO Secretariat. It is a key innovation in getting samples from affected countries in a timely and secure fashion. We also support early, voluntary compliance with the revised International Health Regulations. We have made sizeable investments in creating a worldwide network of surveillance, most recently with international labs:
President Bush has made clear his commitment to forward-positioning a portion of U.S. antiviral stocks for use in a human pandemic. Today, I am pleased to announce the United States government has just deployed treatment courses of Tamiflu to a secure location in Asia. The shipment is currently in transit and will arrive later this week. The United States has pledged $334 million to help other nations prepare for and respond to outbreaks of avian influenza. But now the challenge is to turn pledges into preparedness. If our collective resources are to make a real difference, we must coordinate all our spending to avoid duplication and the waste of precious funds. Earlier today, I met informally with my fellow health ministers of the G-8 to talk about the need for a coordinated spending plan. This will be discussed in more detail at the senior officials meeting of the International Partnership on Avian and Pandemic Influenza in Vienna this June. In closing, I ask this Assembly today to pledge with me to abide by four principles of pandemic preparedness:
If we do this, we will be more prepared today than we were yesterday, and more prepared tomorrow than we are today. Thank you. Last revised: May 23, 2006 |
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