Animesh Roul, Executive Director, Society for the Study of Peace and Conflict, New Delhi, engaged in a conversation with Priti Patnaik, the Founding Editor of Geneva Health Files (GHF). The discussion centred around the proposed pandemic treaty and the principal challenges that lie ahead for this treaty.
In Conversation with David P. Fidler (CFR) on the Proposed Pandemic Treaty, Global Health, and India
"I do not think a pandemic treaty is a good response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Nothing in the WHO-sponsored negotiation process so far has changed my perspective," says global health expert David P. Fidler, Senior Fellow at Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and the author of "A New U.S.
In January 2006, the World Health Organization (WHO) estimated that HIV/AIDS has killed 25 million people since it was first identified twenty-five years ago, in 1981. In India, the first case of HIV was detected in Chennai in 1986. Now, as per the UNAIDS estimate, HIV affected people in India is staggering 5.7 million. NACO (National Aids Control Organisation) has put the figure to be 5.2 million. India is second only to South Africa in terms of the overall number of people living with the disease. Although, the statistics vary with various reports, the threat within persists.
The world is still recuperating from the onslaught of the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) that killed 774 persons and spread to almost every corner of the globe in 2003-04. The World Health Organisation (WHO) warns that we are again closer to experiencing the next pandemic, Bird Flu (Avian Influenza). David Heymann of WHO recently observed that the ‘world is at great risk of a new pandemic of deadly bird flu, but is ill-prepared to handle it’.