On December 26, the head of the World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said that the world has to properly prepare for future “pandemics” after concluding three years of Covid-19 “crisis, pain and loss.”
During his end-of-year message, the WHO director-general claimed that 2023 signified a turning point in tackling key health challenges but also brought “immense and avoidable suffering.” He urged for increased relief efforts for the Gaza Strip, and asked nations to seal a “monumental” pandemic accord to address gaps in preparedness that were revealed during the Covid-19 years.
In May, Tedros had proclaimed an end to Covid-19 as an international public health emergency. “This marked a turning point for the world following three years of crisis, pain and loss for people everywhere,” he stated in a video message. “I’m glad to see that life has returned to normal.”
After 10 months, in May 2023, the WHO also lifted a similar emergency on mpox and authorized new vaccines for malaria, dengue, and meningitis. Moreover, Azerbaijan, Belize, and Tajikistan were classified malaria-free.
Tedros also pointed out the “barbaric” Hamas attacks on Israel, “followed by the unleashing of a devastating attack on Gaza.”
The bloodiest ever Gaza war broke out between Israel and the terrorist group Hamas when the latter attacked southern Israel on October 7 and killed about 1,140 people, mostly civilians, based on an AFP tally relying on Israeli figures.
Hamas members took 250 hostages of whom 129 remain inside Gaza.
Subsequently, Israel conducted a widespread aerial bombardment and ground invasion. The campaign has killed 20,915 people, mostly women and children, according to Hamas-run Gaza’s Health Ministry. “Relief efforts are not coming close to meeting the needs of people in Gaza,” Tedros said, highlighting the WHO’s call for an immediate ceasefire.
A resurgence of cholera, with a record number of 40-plus outbreaks around the world, is also “especially concerning,” he elaborated.
As he rounded up the WHO’s 75th year, Tedros said that, regarding emergency preparedness and response, gaps remain in the world’s readiness to avert the next “pandemic.”
“But 2024 offers a unique opportunity to address these gaps,” he stated, with countries negotiating the first-ever global agreement on pandemic threats. “The pandemic accord is being designed to bridge the gaps in global collaboration, cooperation and equity.”
Meanwhile, Slovakian politicians are campaigning against the WHO’s controversial pandemic treaty, which has been sharply lambasted for attempting to circumvent the sovereignty of nations during times of global disease outbreak. Estonia and New Zealand have already rebuffed the WHO’s proposed treaty.
“The globalists liked the control over people during Covid, so they want to make it the new standard in the future,” said member of European Parliament and chairman of the Republika Movement Milan Uhrík, as reported by Slovak news outlet Denník N. “This is what the new pandemic agreement is preparing for.”
A draft form of the WHO Pandemic Treaty, which is poised to be completed for consideration at the 77th World Health Assembly in 2024, is meant to be a “global accord on pandemic prevention.” All of the organization’s 194 member countries would have to adhere to this treaty.
Based on a report by LifeSiteNews, the accord “aims to achieve greater equity and effectiveness for pandemic prevention, preparedness and response through the fullest national and international cooperation.”
The initiative began in December 2021 after the WHO decried the “catastrophic failure of the international community in showing solidarity and equity in response to the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic.”
Opponents of the proposed treaty, which has been advanced alongside new amendments to the WHO’s International Health Regulations (IHR), have broached grave fears about the ramifications of the globalized public health controls on the sovereignty of member nations.
For his part, Tedros has contended that resistance to the treaty is premised on “misinformation,” and that worries about forfeiting national sovereignty are “nonsense.”
Notwithstanding his assertions, nonetheless, in Slovakia, where voters recently elected controversial populist Prime Minister Robert Fico, politicians are voicing their misgivings about the treaty. Some lawmakers have claimed that the accord is a “globalist” bid to grab power from individual nations under the pretext of emergency preparedness.
Tomáš Taraba, minister of the environment for the SNS (Slovak National Party), declared that the “government will not agree to any WHO treaty that would transfer national sovereignty in dealing with any pandemic to a supranational body,” according to Denník N.
He said such a scheme to transfer national sovereignty has been “circulated in the working documents” of the treaty, “where the WHO is supposed to have the right to deny the sovereignty of states and human rights.”
The Slovakian prime minister himself has also seemingly declined the WHO’s proposed pandemic treaty.
A populist leader, Fico ran his election campaign against supplying military aid to Ukraine. He also vehemently objected to mass migration from Middle Eastern countries and dismissed the leftist LGBT agenda. While he was a member of the Communist Party in his early career, Fico has lately been likened to conservative Hungarian leader Viktor Orbán and former U.S. President Donald Trump for his nationalist rhetoric and criticism of present globalist priorities.
In a November 17 speech, Fico reportedly said his party would “not support strengthening the powers of the World Health Organization at the expense of sovereign states in managing the fight against pandemics.”
According to an English translation of the speech shared on social media, Fico lambasted the treaty as “nonsense” that “could only be invented by greedy pharmaceutical companies which began to perceive the opposition of some governments against mandatory vaccination.”
“According to the Constitution of the Slovak Republic, the validity of such international agreements in favor of the World Health Organization requires the consent of the National Council of the Slovak Republic,” he reportedly declared, adding that he doesn’t “believe that the sovereign Slovak political parties will express such approval” and that his party “certainly won’t.”
