World must be better prepared for next pandemic: WHO chief

World Health Organization (WHO) chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on Monday called on countries to invest in public health and said the world must be better prepared for the next pandemic.

“This will not be the last pandemic,” he warned.

At a news conference in Geneva, he said history teaches us that outbreaks and pandemics are a fact of life. “But when the next pandemic comes, the world must be ready – more ready than it was this time,” he said, according to a WHO statement.

COVID-19 is teaching all of us many lessons.

Public health is the foundation of social, economic and political stability.

That means investing in population-based services for preventing, detecting and responding to disease, he said.

Many countries have done well because they learned lessons from previous outbreaks of SARS, MERS, measles, polio, Ebola, flu and other diseases, said Tedros.

Source:UNB