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STORY: WHO / CHAN
TRT: 02:38
SOURCE: WHO
RESTRICTIONS: NONE
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH / NATS
DATELINE: 22 MAY 2017, WHO HEADQUARTERS, GENEVA, SWITZERLAND / FILE
1. Various shots, WHO Director-general Margaret Chan walks up to podium
2. SOUNDBITE (English) Margaret Chan, Director-general of the World Health Organization (WHO):
“The political and economic outlook is much less optimistic than it was when I took office in 2007.”
3. Wide shot, audience
4. SOUNDBITE (English) Margaret Chan, Director-general of the World Health Organization (WHO):
“The world was not at all fortunate with the 2014 Ebola outbreak that utterly devastated the populations of Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone. This was West Africa’s first experience with Ebola, and the outbreak took everyone, including WHO, by surprise.”
5. Wide shot, audience
6. SOUNDBITE (English) Margaret Chan, Director-general of the World Health Organization (WHO):
“But WHO made quick course corrections, brought the three outbreaks under control, and gave the world its first Ebola vaccine that confers substantial protection. This happened on my watch, and I am personally accountable.”
7. Wide shot, audience
8. SOUNDBITE (English) Margaret Chan, Director-general of the World Health Organization (WHO):
“The initiatives we all most want to succeed are those for the eradication of polio and guinea worm disease. For both, the world has never been so close.”
Wide shot, audience
9. SOUNDBITE (English) Margaret Chan, Director-general of the World Health Organization (WHO):
“The trend that most profoundly reshaped the mind-set of public health was the rise of chronic noncommunicable diseases. This shift in the disease burden called for a move away from the biomedical model of health and its emphasis on curing diseases to a much broader approach based on prevention.”
10. Wide shot, audience
11. SOUNDBITE (English) Margaret Chan, Director-general of the World Health Organization (WHO):
“Scientific evidence is the bedrock of policy. Protect it. No one knows whether evidence will retain its persuasive power in what many now describe as a post-truth world.”
12. Various shots, Chan saluting to audience
In her final opening address to the World Health Assembly as Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO), Dr Margaret Chan today (22 May) looked back at the challenges and successes during her years at the helm of the organization.
Chan noted that “the political and economic outlook is much less optimistic” today than it was when she took office in 2007.
The Director-general said “the world was not at all fortunate with the 2014 Ebola outbreak that utterly devastated the populations of Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone.”
She acknowledged the outbreak “took everyone, including WHO, by surprise.”
Chan said the WHO “made quick course corrections, brought the three outbreaks under control, and gave the world its first Ebola vaccine that confers substantial protection.”
She stressed that “this happened on my watch, and I am personally accountable.”
Chan also pointed out that “the initiatives we all most want to succeed are those for the eradication of polio and guinea worm disease. For both, the world has never been so close.”
The rise of chronic noncommunicable diseases, she said, was “the trend that most profoundly reshaped the mind-set of public health,” and added that “this shift in the disease burden called for a move away from the biomedical model of health and its emphasis on curing diseases to a much broader approach based on prevention.”
Protecting scientific evidence should form "the bedrock of policy", she said and added that “no one knows whether evidence will retain its persuasive power in what many now describe as a post-truth world.”
Some 3,500 delegates from WHO’s 194 Member States – including a large proportion of the world’s health ministers - are attending the Health Assembly, which ends on 31 May. They are currently debating ways to advance the 2030 agenda, focusing on building better systems for health.
Tomorrow, Member States will elect a new Director-General, who will take office for a five-year term on 1 July 2017. The three nominees for the position, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus of Ethiopia; Dr David Nabarro of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and Dr Sania Nishtar of Pakistan, will each address the Health Assembly for 15 minutes tomorrow.
