Our Correspondent Muzaffarabad
The AJK President Sardar Masood Khan has stressed the need of activating global health diplomacy to project future threats of pandemics and to create platforms to consolidate the resources and solutions offered by multilateral organizations, governments, the private sector, and research institutions.
‘During the current Covid-19 pandemic, it has become clear that the World Health Organization should be put at the center stage to provide overall leadership and decision-making for combating pandemics,’ he said.
He made these remarks while speaking as chief guest at a seminar on Pandemic Preparedness: Science and Countermeasures organized by Dr Zabta Shinwari of Quaid-e-Azam University.
He said that Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) was a landmark in prohibiting the use of weapons of mass destruction.
Both conventional wisdom and scientific evidence indicate that the outbreak of the coronavirus was accidental.
However, he maintained the biggest threat to humanity in this century has come not from chemical or nuclear weapons but from a single-stranded pathogen – coronavirus.
Sardar Masood Khan said that as president of the 2006 BWC Review Conference and as Chairman of the 2007 BWC States Parties, he had emphasized on enabling the regime to monitor and foresee threats substantiated by rapid scientific and technological evidence.
We have learnt the hard way that the potential range and lethality of viruses are no less than that of bio-weapons, he added.
The state president exhorted the need of investing productively in health research in order to prevent and contain the viral disease and to develop capabilities to produce vaccines, upgrade diagnostics and improve hospital care.
He said we need to reinvigorate our efforts to swiftly achieve the 3rd Sustainable Goal that is Good Health and Well-being.
“This will be possible only by developing universal healthcare frameworks that would enable us to address existing inequalities in access to healthcare.
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