Thread by @WHO

LIVE: Opening of the 76th World Health Assembly with @DrTedros. #WHA76 twitter.com/i/broadcasts/1…

@DrTedros "In 1977, Ali Maow Maalin was a 23-year-old working as a hospital cook in the port of Merca, #Somalia.

In addition to his duties in the kitchen, Maalin had worked as a vaccinator in WHO’s #smallpox eradication programme, which had hunted down the last remaining cases of smallpox… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…

@DrTedros "In October of that year, two children with #smallpox from a nomadic group were sent to an isolation camp near Merca. The driver who was transporting them stopped at the hospital where Maalin worked to ask for directions.

Maalin offered to accompany them. The driver asked if he… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…

@DrTedros "Maalin was in contact with the infected children for 15 minutes. But that was enough.

Nine days later he started to feel sick and developed a rash. He was diagnosed with chickenpox and sent home. But Maalin knew it wasn’t chickenpox"-@DrTedros #WHA76

@DrTedros "He was too scared to go to the isolation camp, but a hospital nurse reported that he was sick.

The hospital stopped taking patients while everyone inside was vaccinated and put in quarantine"-@DrTedros #WHA76

@DrTedros "Meanwhile, a team started vaccinating everyone surrounding Maalin’s home – more than 50,000 people in two weeks.

Ali Maow Maalin was the last recorded case of naturally occurring #smallpox. He went on to work with WHO in the polio eradication campaign in Somalia. He used to say… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…

@DrTedros "In 2013, during a campaign to counter a flare-up of polio, he contracted malaria and died a few days later, aged 59"-@DrTedros #WHA76

https://twitter.com/WHO/status/1660293217126961157?s=20

@DrTedros "The campaign to eradicate #smallpox was launched in 1959 by WHO Director-General Dr Marcolino Candau, and ended officially in 1980 with the World Health Assembly’s declaration “that the world and all its people have won freedom from smallpox”"-@DrTedros #WHA76

@DrTedros "It remains the greatest achievement in the history of public health, and the only human disease [#smallpox] to have been eradicated to date. But today we stand on the threshold of eradicating two more diseases: polio and Guinea worm"-@DrTedros #WHA76

@DrTedros "When the Global #Polio Eradication Programme was launched in 1988 under Director-General Hiroshi Nakajima, #Japan, there were an estimated 350 thousand cases a year. So far this year there have been just three cases"-@DrTedros #WHA76

@DrTedros "And when the #GuineaWorm Eradication Program began in 1986, there were an estimated 3.5 million human cases in 21 countries. Last year, just 13 cases were reported from four countries.

We will finish the job. We must. But our work will not be done"-@DrTedros #WHA76

@DrTedros "I grew up next door to Maalin, in #Ethiopia. In Africa, we are all neighbours. One of my earliest memories is walking with my mother through the streets of Asmara – then Ethiopia, now Eritrea – and seeing posters about a disease called smallpox and an organization that was… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…

@DrTedros "I had never heard of #smallpox before. I had never heard of the World Health Organization. I couldn’t have pointed to Geneva on a map. But I knew that sometimes, diseases could sneak up on children and snatch them away"-@DrTedros #WHA76

@DrTedros "I knew, because that’s what happened to one of my brothers. I don’t know what disease took him. Maybe measles. But most probably he was taken by a disease that could have been prevented with a vaccine"-@DrTedros #WHA76

@DrTedros "Vaccines drove #smallpox into oblivion. But millions of children across Africa and around the world – children just like my brother – continued to be snatched away by diseases for which children in other countries were immunized"-@DrTedros #WHA76

@DrTedros "That’s why, in 1974, WHO launched the Expanded Programme on Immunization, to ensure all children, in all countries, benefited from the life-saving power of vaccines, initially for six major diseases: diphtheria, pertussis, tetanus, polio, measles and tuberculosis"-@DrTedros… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…

@DrTedros "At the time, only about 10% of the world’s children received three doses of DTP vaccine. Thanks to the Expanded Programme on Immunization, it reached 86% in 2019, but has slipped since then owing to the disruptions of the #COVID19 pandemic"-@DrTedros #WHA76

@DrTedros "Today, more than 30 diseases are vaccine-preventable, and EPI recommends 13 as essential for every country. Through WHO's support for countries to ensure access to vaccines for all children, we are helping to avert more than 4 million deaths every year"-@DrTedros #WHA76

@DrTedros "Vaccines are among the most powerful innovations in human history.

Thanks to vaccines, once-feared diseases like diphtheria, tetanus, measles and meningitis can now be easily prevented.

Vaccines now give us hope of eliminating cervical cancer;

Vaccines are helping us to snuff… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…

@DrTedros "For more than 20 years, millions of children around the world have enjoyed the benefits of vaccines thanks to the work of @gavi. And for the past 12 years, that work has been led by my friend and my brother Seth Berkley, who is stepping down in August"-@DrTedros #WHA76

@DrTedros @gavi "Under his [Seth's] leadership, @gavi introduced new vaccines against cervical cancer, malaria, pneumonia, meningitis, polio, and reached the incredible milestone of immunizing 1 billion children"-@DrTedros #WHA76

@DrTedros @gavi "During the pandemic, Seth was a champion of vaccine equity through @gavi's partnership in COVAX, which supplied nearly 2 billion vaccine doses to 147 countries"-@DrTedros #WHA76

@DrTedros @gavi "I offer Seth my deep gratitude for his leadership and partnership, and I look forward to working with his successor, Dr Muhammad Pate to realise the power of vaccines for even more children"-@DrTedros #WHA76

@DrTedros @gavi "The demise of smallpox coincided with the realization that achieving the founding vision of WHO for the highest attainable standard of health for all people could not be achieved one disease at a time"-@DrTedros #WHA76

@DrTedros @gavi "It would require a holistic approach that delivered the health services people need, where and when they need them, but that also improved health literacy, nutrition, water and sanitation and other drivers of disease"-@DrTedros #WHA76

@DrTedros @gavi "It was an approach we now know as primary health care, and its chief architect and advocate was WHO’s third Director-General, Dr Halfdan Mahler. Under Dr Mahler’s leadership, the term “#HealthForAll” was first coined as the theme of the World Health Assembly in 1977"-@DrTedros… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…

@DrTedros @gavi "And under Dr Mahler’s leadership, the Declaration of Alma-Ata was negotiated and adopted in 1978 – a landmark commitment to primary health care as the platform for achieving a bold vision: #HealthForAll by the year 2000"-@DrTedros #WHA76

@DrTedros @gavi "It was a milestone in public health that changed the way countries thought about, designed and delivered health services – and continues to do so. Although the vision of #HealthForAll by 2000 was not realised, its spirit and ambition persisted, and today the concept of primary… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…

@DrTedros @gavi "5 years ago, I had the honour to join our colleagues from UNICEF and Ministers of Health from around the world in 🇰🇿, the birthplace of the Declaration of Alma-Ata, to renew our commitment to its vision in the Declaration of Astana"-@DrTedros #WHA76

https://twitter.com/WHO/status/1055358886067269632?s=20

@DrTedros @gavi "Dr Mahler later described the adoption of the Declaration of Alma-Ata as a “sacred moment” and a “sublime consensus”"-@DrTedros #WHA76

@DrTedros @gavi "But in 1981, just three years after Alma-Ata, and just one year after the World Health Assembly declared smallpox eradicated, a new threat emerged, the likes of which the world had never seen before"-@DrTedros #WHA76

@DrTedros @gavi "In the United States, the first cases were reported of a mysterious new illness – an illness that appeared first in gay men, and within months was reported around the world, affecting people of all ages and sexualities"-@DrTedros #WHA76

@DrTedros @gavi "It was not for another two years that the cause of this new disease was identified – a retrovirus we now know as HIV. HIV presented a new challenge for WHO; a challenge it did not always meet successfully"-@DrTedros #WHA76

@DrTedros @gavi "It highlighted the fact that a global health challenge of this scale and speed could not be met by one agency alone, but required WHO to work with partners across the UN system and beyond"-@DrTedros #WHA76

@DrTedros @gavi "It also highlighted in a new and stark way the vast inequities in global health. When the first antiretroviral treatments became available in 1987, only high-income countries could afford them"-@DrTedros #WHA76

@DrTedros @gavi "By the turn of the century, the severity of the global #HIV epidemic prompted the United Nations Security Council to adopt a resolution on HIV, the first time it considered a health issue as a threat to global security"-@DrTedros #WHA76

@DrTedros @gavi "But the inequities continued. By 2003, only 400,000 people were receiving ARVs in low- and middle-income countries"-@DrTedros #WHA76

@DrTedros @gavi "Since the smallpox eradication campaign, WHO had developed proven know-how in getting essential medicines to people who needed them, wherever they were"-@DrTedros #WHA76

@DrTedros @gavi "And so, under the leadership of then Director-General Dr J.W. Lee, Republic of Korea, WHO launched the “3 by 5” initiative – to get ARVs to 3 million people by 2005. It took an extra two years to reach the target, but “3 by 5” laid the platform for the dramatic expansion in… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…

@DrTedros @gavi "Sadly, Dr Lee did not live to see the accomplishment of his vision. Tomorrow marks the anniversary of his passing, in May 2006"-@DrTedros #WHA76

https://twitter.com/WHO/status/1660297004642103298?s=20

@DrTedros @gavi "For most of the first 50 years of its history, WHO’s work was focused mainly on infectious diseases afflicting low-income countries. But throughout those decades, a new pandemic was spreading almost unchecked, fuelled by the deadliest non-infectious agent in history –… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…

@DrTedros @gavi "The link between smoking and lung cancer was proved by the British researcher Richard Doll in 1952, shortly after WHO was founded, but smoking prevalence continued to climb for decades"-@DrTedros #WHA76

@DrTedros @gavi "Indeed, some of the photos from WHO’s early years show men in offices – and yes, they were mostly men – sitting at their desks, smoking"-@DrTedros #WHA76

@DrTedros @gavi "It was not until 1988 that Dr Halfdan Mahler banned smoking inside WHO buildings. He smashed his own ashtray with a hammer in the WHO lobby, and pledged to stop smoking"-@DrTedros #WHA76

@DrTedros @gavi "And it was only in 2013 that our entire headquarters campus became smoke-free. The manager of the Tobacco Free Initiative at the time, Dr Armando Peruga, was even roughed up a couple of times by WHO staff for telling them not to smoke on campus"-@DrTedros #WHA76

@DrTedros @gavi "Some countries made their own efforts to curb the harms of tobacco, but it became clear that unlike localised disease outbreaks, tobacco was a global threat that demanded a global response"-@DrTedros #WHA76

@DrTedros @gavi "WHO’s founders had foreseen this need in Article 19 of the Constitution, which enabled Member States to adopt conventions or agreements on any health threat"-@DrTedros #WHA76

@DrTedros @gavi "But it was a provision that lay dormant until the mid-1990s, when an American lawyer, Dr Ruth Roemer, first proposed the idea of an international treaty on tobacco control"-@DrTedros #WHA76

@DrTedros @gavi "Dr Roemer had herself been a heavy smoker, and for a short time her husband had worked for WHO. Dr Roemer proposed her idea to Neil Collishaw, who was then the head of WHO’s tobacco control unit"-@DrTedros #WHA76

@DrTedros @gavi "Collishaw was supportive, but skeptical. Adopting a convention would require a two-thirds majority of Member States, and at the time, only about 10 countries had strong tobacco control policies"-@DrTedros #WHA76

@DrTedros @gavi "But Dr Roemer wouldn’t take no for an answer. That’s how many of the best ideas in global health happen, and there’s often a woman behind them"-@DrTedros #WHA76

https://twitter.com/WHO/status/1660297898167263233?s=20