This week, more than 25 leaders from the G20, G7 and from every region, united behind the idea of a pandemic treaty. I am pleased that more leaders are now joining the call for a pandemic treaty, which would be a generational commitment to keeping the world safe. There will always be new pathogens with pandemic potential.
One key aspect that should be enshrined in the treaty, is to a stronger health workforce which is the very essence of health systems resilience. This is the year of the health and care worker and we know that even before the pandemic, there was a shortfall of at least 18 million health workers. As we work to end the pandemic and recover together, health and care workers must come first.
Investing in the health workforce is an investment in women and youth: almost 70% of the global health workforce are women. In particular we must support countries with fewer resources to expand their workforce capacity and pay decent salaries.
The clock is still ticking on vaccine equity. We have nine days left until we reach the hundredth day of the year and the target of starting vaccine rollout to health workers and those at-risk in all countries remains in our grasp.
Today, I’m happy to welcome former Prime Minister of Sweden, Carl Bildt, who has joined the ACT-Accelerator as a special advisor. Carl will help lead the collective advocacy for the ACT-Accelerator, mobilizing support and critical resources so it can deliver against its strategy for 2021.
