G7 nations commit to health declaration to recover and rebuild from COVID-19 pandemic

CORNWALL: The leaders of the G7 nations met on Saturday, June 12, to sign a landmark global health declaration called ‘Carbis Bay Health Declaration’ aimed at preventing future pandemics.  The leaders of the group of rich nations committed to work “expeditiously and collectively” towards ending the COVID-19 pandemic and using all their resources to prevent a pandemic from ever happening again.

Boris Johnson, Prime Minister of UK, hosted the major in-person world summit, and said that even though the world has developed vaccines in an unprecedented duration, in order to truly defeat the coronavirus, the world will need to prevent a pandemic like this from ever happening again. “That means learning lessons from the last 18 months and doing it differently next time around,” he added.

United Kingdom will set up a new animal vaccine development centre to control zootonic diseases (human diseases which originate in animals). According to Downing Street, aiming to stop new air-borne diseases before they put people at risk, the UK will set up an Animal Vaccine Manufacturing and Innovation Centre at the Pirbright Institute in Surrey, south-east England.

The Pandemic Preparedness Partnership published an independent report titled ‘100 Days Mission to Respond to Future Pandemic Threats’. This report contains recommendations on how governments and others can quickly respond to any future outbreak of infections. Actionable recommendations have been made quash any threat of epidemic or pandemic within 100 days of identification. The Carbis Bay Declaration incorporates these recommendations and sets out the steps G7 countries will need to take to avoid a future pandemic.

Dr Tedros Adhanom, Director General, World Health Organisation, commented that WHO welcomes the declaration, particularly as the world begins to recover and rebuild from the COVID-19 pandemic. He added that it is essential for governments globally to together build on the significant scientific and collaborative response to the COVID-19 pandemic, and to find common solutions to address the many gaps identified.