WHO Taps Ex-Liberian President, Ex-New Zealand Prime Minister to Lead Virus Panel

together we now have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to prove to each other that we can be greater than the sum of our parts the magnitude of this pandemic which has touched virtually everyone in the world clearly deserves a commensurate evaluation and an honest evaluation this is not a standard report that ticks a box and is then put on a shelf to gather dust this is something we take seriously we learn honestly and we follow through to honest to the assessment and honest to the follow-through and implementation that's what's required with this in mind I'm proud to

announce that former Prime Minister Helen Clark and former President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and also a Nobel laureate have agreed to serve as co-chairs of the evaluation committee which we are calling the independent panel for pandemic preparedness and response IPPR Prime Minister Clark of New Zealand went on to leave the United Nations Development Program as you know and President Sirleaf of Liberia as I said earlier is a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize of course we'll be hearing from them shortly but I was so proud that these two distinguished ladies have accepted the challenge and I

agreed to lead the panel Prime Minister Clark and President Sirleaf were selected through a process of broad informal consultation with member states and world experts I cannot imagine two more strong-minded independent leaders to help guide us through this critical learning process to understand to help us understand what happened an honest assessment and to help us understand also what we should do to prevent such a tragedy in the future so collectively as a world to say never again to such kind of tragedy this one's in a century pandemic has hammered home a critical lesson when it

comes to health our destinies are intertwined the virus has upended health systems in some of the world's wealthiest nations while some countries that have mounted a successful response have been of modest means we know that when countries take a comprehensive approach based on fundamental public health measures such as find isolate test and treat cases and tress and quarantine contacts the outbreak can be brought under control but in most of the world the virus is not under control it's getting worse more than eleven point eight million cases of kovat 19 have now been reported 2wo more

than five hundred forty-four thousand lives had been lost and the pandemic is still accelerating the total number of cases has doubled in the last six weeks you