Excellencies,Colleagues,Ladies and Gentlemen,
I am pleased to join you at this important side event on “COVID-19 vaccines: scientific advances, access models and vaccination acceptance”.
Let me thank colleagues and friends from:
? the UN Technology Facilitation Mechanism,? the World Health Organization,? GAVI, the Vaccine Alliance,? Wilton Park,? the US Council for International Business (USCIB) Foundation,? Business Partners for Sustainable Development, and? the City University of New York, for co-organizing this meeting.
Thank you also to all joining us online. There is no topic of greater importance today. The COVID-19 pandemic has uprooted the lives of billions. Many have lost loved ones. And many more continue to suffer from the disease and from the unavoidable consequences of what we must do to slow its spread.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
This pandemic will only be over when we have effective and safe vaccines, accessible to all, and adopted by sufficiently large numbers of people.
As we work towards this solution, we must recognize that our progress reveals – not just advances in capabilities – but also our inequalities and the challenges in mobilising a whole-of-society and whole-of-humanity response.
Recent advances in biotechnology and digital technologies have helped speed up virus identification, testing, drug and vaccine development.
This is heartening and gives us hope. At the same time, many institutions are falling short during this unexpected “stress test”.
As the Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN DESA) presented in its COVID-19 policy briefs, this crisis is a wake-up call. It is a call for strengthening the science-policy-society interface at all levels and for building public trust in science. And, indeed, for more effective international cooperation around science, technology and innovation.Ladies and Gentlemen,
In 2015, the UN Member States launched the UN Technology Facilitation Mechanism in support of the SDGs.
The Mechanism – which UN DESA co-convenes – seeks to encourage a new multi-stakeholder way of working. It aims to bring governmental decision makers and the entire UN system closer to the private sector, academia and civil society, to more effectively deploy science, technology and innovation towards the SDGs.
The event you are participating in today is in line with this objective.
We will continue our collaboration with you to better inform our own broader capacity development efforts. Strengthening the science-policy-society interface at all levels, is critical, including in the recovery from the pandemic.
We will also continue to disseminate good practices and promote partnerships in all of the areas where science, technology and innovation are effective. Our recent call for technology-based responses to the pandemic elicited hundreds of submissions, which we will share through our web-site.
I encourage you all to get engaged and I wish you all an inspiring and fruitful discussion.
Thank you.
I am pleased to join you at this important side event on “COVID-19 vaccines: scientific advances, access models and vaccination acceptance”.
Let me thank colleagues and friends from:
? the UN Technology Facilitation Mechanism,? the World Health Organization,? GAVI, the Vaccine Alliance,? Wilton Park,? the US Council for International Business (USCIB) Foundation,? Business Partners for Sustainable Development, and? the City University of New York, for co-organizing this meeting.
Thank you also to all joining us online. There is no topic of greater importance today. The COVID-19 pandemic has uprooted the lives of billions. Many have lost loved ones. And many more continue to suffer from the disease and from the unavoidable consequences of what we must do to slow its spread.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
This pandemic will only be over when we have effective and safe vaccines, accessible to all, and adopted by sufficiently large numbers of people.
As we work towards this solution, we must recognize that our progress reveals – not just advances in capabilities – but also our inequalities and the challenges in mobilising a whole-of-society and whole-of-humanity response.
Recent advances in biotechnology and digital technologies have helped speed up virus identification, testing, drug and vaccine development.
This is heartening and gives us hope. At the same time, many institutions are falling short during this unexpected “stress test”.
As the Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN DESA) presented in its COVID-19 policy briefs, this crisis is a wake-up call. It is a call for strengthening the science-policy-society interface at all levels and for building public trust in science. And, indeed, for more effective international cooperation around science, technology and innovation.Ladies and Gentlemen,
In 2015, the UN Member States launched the UN Technology Facilitation Mechanism in support of the SDGs.
The Mechanism – which UN DESA co-convenes – seeks to encourage a new multi-stakeholder way of working. It aims to bring governmental decision makers and the entire UN system closer to the private sector, academia and civil society, to more effectively deploy science, technology and innovation towards the SDGs.
The event you are participating in today is in line with this objective.
We will continue our collaboration with you to better inform our own broader capacity development efforts. Strengthening the science-policy-society interface at all levels, is critical, including in the recovery from the pandemic.
We will also continue to disseminate good practices and promote partnerships in all of the areas where science, technology and innovation are effective. Our recent call for technology-based responses to the pandemic elicited hundreds of submissions, which we will share through our web-site.
I encourage you all to get engaged and I wish you all an inspiring and fruitful discussion.
Thank you.
File date:
Friday, July 10, 2020