Remarks by Mike Ryan, Executive Director of the World Health Organization Health Emergencies Programme, on the release of the updated COVID-19 Global Humanitarian Response Plan.
COVID-19 has now reached practically every country on the planet, with the World Health Organization (WHO) reporting more than 3.6 million cases and over 251,000 deaths as of Thursday. However, humanitarians believe the peak of the disease in the world’s poorest countries is expected to hit within the next three to six months.
The WHO’s Health Emergencies Programme Executive Director, Dr. Michael Ryan, said, “tackling the pandemic while continuing to provide life-saving and essential health services in places where infrastructure is at best limited and often destroyed, health systems are already at breaking point, and where health-care workers and communities may be facing conflict and other emergencies, this is an extremely challenging task.”
Ryan said it was “critical that we maintain these services.”
