Newz©WHO/Chris B.Geneva – His Excellency Jérôme Bonnafont, Permanent Representative of France to the United Nations in Geneva, and Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General, today signed several funding agreements totaling € 25.5 million to support critical health priorities.The agreements include € 4.5 million of funding for the Core Voluntary Contribution Account (CVCA) of WHO; these are fully flexible funds which allow WHO to allocate resources to key priorities outlined in its General Programme of Work. An additional € 15 million will be used to deliver on specific key priorities, such as One Health, the advancement of universal health coverage, and primary health care, communicable and noncommunicable diseases, the medical countermeasure initiative, and the country readiness strengthening through WHO’s office in Lyon.A large part of the contribution (€ 6 million) is aimed at covering the humanitarian response on several fronts: € 2 million will go towards enhancing mental health initiatives in Ukraine; € 0.35 million is to support the response to the cholera outbreak in Malawi; € 1 million will support WHO’s humanitarian response in Gaza, with an additional € 2 million dedicated to strengthening the technical and human activities of the WHO Office in the occupied Palestinian territory. Finally, € 0.65 million will go to the Contingency Fund for Emergencies, to be used as needs arise.“As one of the world’s largest economies, France has a critical role to play in global health.
France's financial contributions and agreements, signed today, provide flexibility and align well with WHO’s priorities to promote, provide, protect, power and perform for health” said Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General.France’s WHO Framework Agreement for the period 2020-2025 ensures sustainable funding for priority health programmes, aligned with WHO priorities.Some of the joint 2022-2023 collaboration priorities include the work of the WHO Academy, based in Lyon, stronger health systems towards universal health coverage, health emergencies – in particular the International Health Regulations (IHR) and health emergencies preparedness – and reducing health inequalities.These priorities align with the France Global Health Strategy 2023-2027, published in October 2023.“Committed to global health, France supports the WHO’s action in crises and for the benefit … Germany deepened its longstanding engagement with WHO on Thursday with two new agreements: one to contribute a further €40 million to WHO’s work in health emergencies, and a second to host the Berlin-based WHO Hub for Pandemic and Epidemic Intelligence.With the new contribution, Germany has provided €53.5 million so far this year to support WHO’s response to more than 50 active health emergencies.“This is important because climate disasters, conflicts, and the ongoing pandemic demand urgent action,” said Susanne Baumann, State Secretary of the Federal Foreign Office for Germany (GFFO), whose delegation met with WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. “Our support is flexible and vital for saving lives around the globe.”Through the GFFO, the country provides substantial funding to humanitarian crises in Afghanistan, Libya, Ukraine, Yemen, and to Ebola responses in Africa.Germany is an all-time top donor to WHO’s Contingency Fund for Emergencies (CFE), having contributed €115 million since the CFE’s inception in 2015.
The contributions have made a significant impact on the health of people caught up in humanitarian crises; this year alone, CFE funding allowed WHO to bring immediate, lifesaving support to victims of floods in Libya, conflict in Sudan, cholera and diphtheria outbreaks, and earthquakes in Türkiye and Syria.Of the new €40 million contribution, €20 million goes to the WHO Health Emergencies Appeal 2023, €10 million to the Ukraine emergency, €10 million for emergencies in Africa.Thursday’s meeting also featured the signing of a host agreement for the WHO Hub for Pandemic and Epidemic Intelligence. The Hub was established with Germany’s support in Berlin in September 2021 to provide the world with better data, analytics and decisions to detect and respond to health emergencies.Coinciding with the signing of the host agreement in Geneva, the German government held in Berlin a high-level forum “Pandemics: no time for neglect,” which focused on political priorities and actions on pandemic prevention, preparedness, and response, along with financing for resilient health systems. WHO’s Chief Scientist, Dr Jeremy Farrar, and Dr Chikwe Ihekweazu, WHO’s Assistant Director-General for Health Emergency Intelligence and Surveillance Systems, addressed the Forum.“After last week’s historic political declaration at the UN General Assembly committing …
Summary from source