Dr Nabarro: Put global solidarity before national goals

On 7 December, on the invitation by Skolkovo colleagues, Dr David Nabarro, Senior Advisor to the United Nations Food Systems Summit Dialogues, and WHO’s Special Envoy on Covid-19, addressed online the Forum “Nobel Vision. Open Innovations 2.0” held on the premises of the Technopark Skolkovo in Moscow. 

Reports and discussions by renowned speakers focused, among other subjects, on the issues brought to the forefront of experts and public discourse by the COVID-19 pandemic. The forum organizers engaged seasoned specialists in debate on the premise that the scale and the pace of transformations in the healthcare industry, driven by both technological developments and the challenges the system has been facing, are forcing science, governments and businesses to reconsider the established system of interaction, putting physicians and patients in the centre. 

“The pandemic is not the last one”, noted Dr Nabarro in his opening remarks at the morning session titled “The day COVID was stopped. Healthcare 2030”. Each month there are 3,000 reports of possible outbreaks of emerging of re-emerging diseases, and 300 out of these 3,000 are screened. And then, 30 out of them are investigated, it makes 360 a year.”  

“I wand to stress that the World Health Organization is trying to keep the world safe by running an enormous multi-country surveillance program. To back it up, there is the only legally binding treaty on health emergency prevention called the International Health Regulations. There are efforts now to re-negotiate it to establish a new instrument on pandemic preparedness, prevention and response.  

I would like to summarize all in five points that we believe are important in relation to the current pandemic and any future pandemic,” emphasized Dr Nabarro. 

“First of all, the virus that causes COVID-19 is not going to go away. It is here to stay. It will come and it will go. It will cause localized spikes of disease. It will mutate and form variants. These variants will continue to emerge. Some will cause much fear; others will be dealt with easily. But remember: the virus is not going away. 

Secondly, we have amazing vaccines. More vaccines are going to come. But relying on vaccines alone to solve the pandemic, we think is unwise. For the start, it appears that vaccines do not stop transmission of this virus. In addition, if we rely on vaccines and variants that can escape the vaccine protection arrive, and these variants are the deadliest, it is really necessary to combine other activities with vaccination. I must tress this: vaccine alone will not be enough. 

Thirdly, we need to continue to practice infection control. In Russia, you know how to do this. But many countries have forgotten. That means having the ability to detect people with disease through accessible testing and then make sure that they are isolated and cannot infect others. We do not favour lockdowns. We do not favour border closures unless absolutely essential. But we do request strong public health services to interrupt transmission. 

Fourthly, this is a global pandemic. It is really not appropriate that individual nations are treating it as if it is a national affair. What happens in one part of the world, quickly influences what goes elsewhere. The only way to do with this is through strong international cooperation. Without that cooperation the virus gets the upper hand. Please, all of you, do everything you can, request your leaders to put global solidarity before national or local goals. The current access to all the necessary vaccines, therapists and diagnostics is heavily skewed towards the countries that have the largest income per person.  

The fifth and last point. The virus is the problem. The people are the solution. Governments that are doing best in responding to this pandemic are the governments that are encouraging their people to work as partners. Governments that are levelling with their people about what the challenges are. Governments that tell the truth. We encourage all nations to involve people as partners, even if their people are resisting vaccination, even if they do not want to wear masks. Do not demonize them. You need them on your side. This is absolutely critical,” concluded Dr Nabarro.

Addressing the audience during the afternoon session devoted to “Multi-country efforts for the Transformation of Food Systems”, Dr Nabarro recalled that at the 2021 UN Food Systems Summit the leaders of more than 140 countries agreed to encourage the transformation of their food systems so that, by 2030, they contribute to the realization of the 2030 Agenda for sustainable development.

“There will be a stock-take of progress in September 2023. The UN system will establish a new modality and way of working to support this transformation,” Dr Nabarro said. “Russia’s contribution is vital: Russia has made impressive progress to the achievement of the second sustainable development goal (ending hunger and malnutrition in all its forms), which contributes to the achievement of SDGs on health, education, and the elimination of poverty in Russia.” 

“At the national progress review at the 2020 High Level Political Forum it was evident that levels of hunger have been substantially reduced. Russia is a leading and stable exporter of grain, thus contributing to the food security of other nations,” Dr Nabarro noted. 

“In the months leading up to the summit at least 1600 multi-stakeholder dialogue events took place to encourage the exploration of food systems issues from multiple perspectives. The overall number of announced participants in dialogues was at least 100,000: they came together from multiple stakeholder groups. 148 governments nominated convenors to organize national dialogues: many other dialogues were organized independently. At least 100 national convenors have submitted pathways towards national food systems of the future.  

“The pathways set out the strategic directions of food systems transformation and are being used to align different parts of government, as well as the diverse community of food systems stakeholders, in working together on the transformation.  

“The Russian contribution has been impressive and continued dialogues are planned within different parts of the country: these were strongly supported by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).  

“We expect that this will evolve as a powerful large-scale multi-country systems transformation effort that is expected to have major and positive consequences at local, national and regional levels, impacting on agriculture and food availability, nutrition and health, environment and climate, women and youth engagement, people’s prosperity and resilience,” concluded Dr Nabarro.