The United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) on February 24 adopted two resolutions on the organization of the High-Level Meeting on Pandemic Prevention, Preparedness and Response and the High-Level Meeting on the Fight Against Tuberculosis, which are expected to be held during the High-Level Week of the UNGA’s 78th session in September.
The High-Level Meeting on Pandemic Prevention, Preparedness and Response aims to draw lessons and experiences from around the world in the fight against COVID-19, thus promoting a multidimensional approach to enhancing prevention and response to future pandemics.
Meanwhile, the High-Level Meeting on the Fight Against Tuberculosis will look to mobilize political will and strengthen measures to promote scientific research, financing, and innovation toward quickly ending the global tuberculosis epidemic by ensuring equal access to preventive, diagnostic, care, and treatment methods.
Chairing the drafting of the UNGA resolution on International Day of Epidemic Preparedness in 2020 and proposing the resolution on organizing the High-Level Meeting on Pandemic Prevention, Preparedness and Response in 2022, Vietnam has actively partnered with other major countries to lead the negotiation process to secure the adoption of the two above-mentioned resolutions.
During the negotiation process, Vietnam emphasized and successfully protected the important contents of the resolutions, such as the need to ensure coherence and complementarity between major health processes discussed in relevant multilateral forums, narrowing the gap in financing, the necessity of strengthening the prevention and response to future pandemics by sharing lessons and experiences from the fight against COVID-19; the importance of ensuring timely, equitable, and unimpeded access to vaccines, diagnosis, treatment as well as strengthening healthcare systems and resilience to achieve universal health coverage for all people.
In the near future, Vietnam will continue actively engaging in the negotiation of political declarations of the above-mentioned meetings to further contribute to the common efforts of the international community in pandemic preparedness and response, and ending the global tuberculosis epidemic as soon as possible.- (VNA/VLLF)
