23:44
PRESIDENT Jakaya Kikwete yesterday
chaired his first meeting of United Nations Secretary General’s High
Level Panel on the Global Response to Health Crises.
The meeting is taking place at the
Office of the Secretariat of the United Nations Secretary General’s High
– Level Panel on the Global Response to Health Crises Conference Room
on the North Lawn Building of the UN headquarters, where a temporary
office has been set aside for President Kikwete.
The president, who arrived in New York
yesterday morning, will chair this first meeting of the Panel for the
next four days following the decision by United Nations
Secretary-General, Ban Ki Moon, to appoint an independent High-Level
Panel on the Global Response to Health Crises last month.
Other members of the panel include Mr
Celso Luiz Nunes Amorimo, former Minister of Foreign Relations
(1993-1994 and 2003-2010) and Defence Minister of Brazil; Ms Micheline
Calmy-Rey, former President of the Swiss Confederation and Mr Marty
Natalegawa, former Foreign Minister of Indonesia and its Permanent
Representative to the United Nations in New York.
Others are Ms Joy Phumaphi, Executive
Secretary of the African Leaders Malaria Alliance and Botswana’s former
Minister for Health and Minister for Lands and Housing and Mr Rajiv
Shah, until January this year, Administrator of the United States Agency
for International Development (USAID).
Panel members, appointed in the
individual capacity, have been tasked by the UN Secretary General to
make recommendations on how to strengthen national and international
systems to prevent and manage future health crises taking into account
lessons learned from the response to the outbreak of Ebola virus
disease.
The secretary general decided to appoint
the panel following the outbreak of Ebola virus disease in West Africa,
which escalated to become one of the largest global public heath crises
in recent history, claiming thousands of lives and sickening many more
with the devastating social-economic impacts.
The spread of the disease in the
epicentre countries of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone has highlighted
the importance and urgency of strengthening the architecture and
management of global heath crises in order to better address future
outbreaks.
Before their first meeting, panel
members were meeting Secretary General Ban Ki Moon, who has asked the
panel to submit periodic progress reports and present its final report
to him at the end of December. He will then make the report available to
the General Assembly and undertake further action as appropriate.
In carrying out its work, the panel will
undertake a wide range of consultations, with representatives from the
affected areas and communities, the UN system, multilateral and
bilateral financial institutions and regional development banks.
Others are non-governmental
organisations (NGOs), countries supporting the response effort, other
member states, health care providers, academic and research
institutions, private sector and other experts.
The UN is providing a small secretariat
for the panel, which can also draw on the resource group of senior and
leading experts, which is to provide specialised advice to the panel on
technical and other issues as required.
Following this first meeting, the panel
will set out its working methods and programme of work, in consultation
with the UN Secretary-General.
The panel is expected to hold a meeting
every six weeks, with three meetings taking place in New York, one at UN
offices in Switzerland, one at the African Union headquarters in Addis
Ababa and one field meeting in the Ebola-affected countries of Guinea,
Liberia and Sierra Leone.
source daily news, may 5, 2015
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