Opening the 68th World Health Assembly, Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO) Margaret Chan said “the spread of Zika, the resurgence of dengue, and the emerging threat from chikungunya are the price being paid for a massive policy failure that dropped the ball on mosquito control in the 1970s.”
She also said “Zika reveals an extreme consequence of the failure to provide universal access to sexual and family planning services.”
In her opening remarks, Margaret Chan warned that Africa’s urbanization have created ideal conditions for explosive outbreaks of urban yellow fever. She said “migrants from rural areas, and workers from mining and construction sites, can now carry the virus into urban areas with powder-keg conditions: dense populations of non-immune people, heavy infestations with mosquitoes exquisitely adapted to urban life, and the flimsy infrastructures that make mosquito control nearly impossible.”
The Director-General said “as the international community enters the era of sustainable development, the global health landscape is being shaped by three slow-motion disasters: a changing climate, the failure of more and more mainstay antimicrobials, and the rise of chronic noncommunicable diseases as the leading killers worldwide. These are not natural disasters. They are man-made disasters created by policies that place economic interests above concerns about the well-being of human lives and the planet that sustains them.”
The Health Assembly is a gathering of all 194 WHO Member States to determine the policies of the Organization, supervise financial policies, and review and approve the proposed programme budget.
The sixty-ninth session of the World Health Assembly (WHA) is taking place takes place in Geneva between 23 and 28 May 2016.