The World Health Organization committee will meet with a membership of between 20 to 30 representatives from December 11 to December 13, 2020. The committee will undertake three topics: international cooperation in response to Covid-19, pandemic preparedness and vaccination programs, and Ebola in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
The first topic concerns international efforts to respond to the novel coronavirus pandemic. Coordination has occurred mainly through the World Health Organization, the European Union, and the United Nations. All these supra-national organizations have worked to coordinate various national and international efforts through measures such as travel and movement, distribution of medical supplies, and sharing of data and scientific information in the attempt to combat the spread of Covid-19 and more quickly develop an effective vaccine.
The second topic addresses pandemic preparedness and vaccination programs. The initial response to the novel coronavirus was less than effective because of poor information sharing and national governments such as China and the USA failing to communicate the severity of the pandemic in a useful way to the rest of the world. Organizations like the WHO and the European Union were left to formulate a response without the assistance of the the number one and number three largest economies in the world. Vaccination programs are only now coming online with the development of multiple effective vaccines, with plans to inoculate healthcare workers and high risk populations such as the elderly before rolling out a general vaccination plan to proceed through 2021.
The third topic examines the history of Ebola epidemics, particularly in West Africa. Ebola, like the novel SARS coronavirus, is a virulent pathogen with a high incidence of mortality. There is as yet no effective treatment for Ebola despite years of data collection, research, and testing. Ebola prefigured in many ways the socio-economic disruptions and even partial collapse of systems following the sudden onset of an epidemic/pandemic. Nevertheless, the world failed to learn lessons from Ebola in a comprehensive way in order to be effective in the 2020 coronavirus pandemic. Ebola epidemics have shown that infectious viral pathogens require cooperation not only on national and regional levels but through worldwide organizations like the WHO.
The WHO committee at the 2020 ASM Model UN Conference will tackle three topics of pressing importance regarding pandemic response and preparedness with a special examination on the West Africa Ebola epidemic.