All right, let's get this show on the road.
Welcome to this press briefing the 23rd of October.
I guess the first thing for me to share with you will have received yesterday.
As you know, tomorrow on Twitter of October is United States we celebrating bursary of the creation of the organisation.
And you will have the Secretary message this week on this occasion, which says that even though we are fighting, a major global democratic foundation is more critical than ever to promote human right, to promote human dignity, to protect human rights, to respect international law and save humanity from war.
He is repeating his call, obviously, for a global ceasefire.
He says that now is the time for a stepped up peace to push to for peace to achieve a global ceasefire.
The clock is ticking and we must also make peace with our planet in turn in in reference to the climate emergencies that we are all facing.
He concludes by saying we face colossal challenges.
With global solidarity and cooperation, we can overcome them.
That's what the United Nations is all about.
the United Nations not only stands with you, the United Nations belongs to you and is you, we the people.
Let's uphold the enduring values of the United Nations Charter.
Among the other activities that will be taking place specifically in Geneva, you will have received the press release we issued yesterday about some buildings and monuments in in Switzerland, namely the Paledinacion, the Jadeau and the Olympic Museum in Lausanne.
Lausanne are joining the Turn Europe UN Blue initiative that was launched by our colleagues in Brussels.
There is close to 200 buildings and monuments all over Europe that will be lit up in blue tomorrow evening to celebrate the 75th anniversary of of the organisation.
And yesterday we had a discussion on the future of multilateralism with our Director General, Tatiana Valovaya, Mary Robinson, former President of Ireland and UN **** Commissioner for Human Rights, and Fabricio Hotshield.
I hope you were able to follow it, but if you didn't, it would be available on webtv.un.org.
If there are no questions, we're going to get right into our agenda with announcements.
To begin with, we have Alejandro Laguna from UNEP.
Yes, I think I see him here.
Alejandro from UNEP, who has an announcement for you?
If we could unmute Alejandro.
Alejandro, we need to unmute you somehow.
Good morning to everyone.
I am terribly sorry that I don't have the official backdrop behind me, but I'm going to be in touch with with all of you today because I will send you the media advisory so you will have my e-mail address.
First of all, I, I hope that everyone is fine.
I haven't been in these briefings for quite some time, so I hope everyone is, is doing well.
And today I have the, I'd say the pleasure of speaking to you about two new reports.
And I'm saying it's a pleasure because it's one of those topics that is quite unusual, at least for me.
I've been working for UNEP in 10 years and I don't think I had ever seen anything like this.
It is the first of its kind and it deals with two of the planetary crises that that we are experiencing, air pollution and climate change.
We're actually going to present 2 reports, not one.
One is has been is going to be released by unit by the UN Environment Programme, the other one by the Netherlands Human Environment and Transport Inspectorate and both of them are are related.
They're going to be launched on Monday.
Today I will be able to send you a media advisory for the virtual launch as well as if you're interested, the embargoed press release and embargoed report.
And the topic is used vehicles and the flow of used vehicles.
So the the UNEP report is titled Used Vehicles and the Environment, a global overview of Used Light UT Vehicles flow, scale and regulation.
And the new report that is going to be launched by the Netherlands is Used Vehicles exported to Africa.
So this includes an in depth analysis of 146 countries and the findings in the unit report are that used cars, bands and minibuses are exported from mainly from Europe, the USA and Japan to the developing world.
And and those used cars have very poor quality.
They don't meet a series of minimum standards which results in undermining efforts to mitigate climate change.
It affects Rd safety and of course air quality.
The report by the Netherlands is is a report that showcases how many cars and vans that are actually shipped from Dutch ports to Africa are outdated and of course contribute again to worsening air quality and to making it a bit more difficult to to fight against climate change.
There are also recommendations, policy recommendations, to try to set a minimum set of standards that could alleviate this situation.
As I said, both reports are going to be launched on Monday virtually.
I'm just very briefly going to mention the speakers, the Executive Director of the UN Environment Programme, the Minister for the Environment of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, the Minister for Environment, Science, Technology and Innovation of the Republic of Ghana, and the head of the Sustainability, Sustainable Mobility Units at UNET in in Nairobi.
As I said, we will be able to provide the media advisory today and embargoed press release and report.
I wish you a very good day and a great weekend.
Thank you very much, Alejandro.
Let's see if there are any questions for you.
Yeah, Peter Kenney in the room has a question.
Yes, Nessandro, good morning.
I wonder if you can say which are the main countries that are importers of second hand vehicles in Africa?
I'm afraid you're going to have to ask that question at the virtual briefing on Monday.
It is an embargoed report and, and I can't give any more details today, but, but that's a question that you could certainly convey on on Monday.
In any case, as I said, I will provide some, I will provide the embargoed materials now, but I, I can't share them on the live broadcast.
Alright, that's one question for you to get ready for on Monday.
Lisa Schlein online also has a question.
Lisa Schlein from Voice of America.
What time is your virtual press conference?
Is it kind of for the whole world this press conference or we're we're we're not we're not favourite children here in Geneva, I gather and will will they besides climate change, kind of, you know, a link between the used cars and health and safety issues.
Sorry, would you mind repeating the last one about climate change?
I mean, you're, you're dealing with used cars, the link with climate change.
I was wondering whether there was going to be any discussion about the health and safety aspects of used cars, which probably are danger zones in themselves.
Indeed, you are absolutely right.
And I think that's the, the beauty of this report.
It puts a lot of elements together, some of which we don't even realise.
And as I said, I, I believe UNEP has never released such a report.
It's not something that a lot of people speak about.
But certainly, for example, in countries in Africa where they are already investing in in renewables, a lot of their emissions are actually coming from transport.
So making sure that these imported vehicles meets certain standards is something that can definitely help their air quality, their health, obviously.
It does also affect Rd safety.
So all these elements are there.
Regarding the your technical question about the the launch, it's going to be on Monday at 1245 E African time.
I believe that's 10-45 CST, 10:45 in the morning.
It is going to be a Zoom, a Zoom meeting.
So I will and I can see I've got the media advisory here in front of me.
There's a link and a passcode.
I will share it if that's fine with you.
I'll just share it after this briefing call with all of you.
One last question from James Keaton, AP Hi Alejandro.
Just wanted to make sure.
I thought I saw that there was an embargo briefing on this yesterday.
And if I did, is there any way to recover, recoup the, the file, the video file from that?
That's the first question.
The second question is about visuals that could be available about they could go along with this.
I mean, are you going to have images of used vehicles and whatnot that we could pick up from UNEP?
Thank you very much for your question.
Indeed, there was one apparently and at least that's what I heard from Nairobi.
It was mostly focused on the on the Dutch report, but I can try to to see if that was recorded.
As for visuals, and I understand this is quite important.
I will also get in touch with my colleagues from the Sustainable Mobility unit to see if they they have some.
I imagine you would be interested both in photos and video, so I'll see if there's anything available.
I'll try to do that right away.
And we'll look for the launch of this report on Monday.
Moving along, we have Jens Lark.
Jens Lark from the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs to brief you on Sudan.
Thank you, Rianne and good morning everyone.
Following the unprecedented rains and floods that affected 875,000 people across Sudan, a secondary health emergency is now looming with more than four and a half million people at risk of vector borne diseases.
The issue is that after the heavy floods and rains, there's now a lot of stagnant water pools, which is a perfect breathing ground for vectors, particularly mosquitoes.
The numbers that we have is from the HealthPartners in Sudan and from the Ministry of of Health in Sudan is about viral haemorrhagic fever, which is one of those diseases that we are concerned about.
We have seen an increase in cases during October.
We now have 2226 cases, the vast majority of them in the northern state and that's according to the ministry.
Viral haemorrhagic fever is a, is a number of different diseases, but they include diseases transmitted by mosquitoes, which is the the issue here, such as dengue, yellow fever and Rift Valley fever.
There's also an outbreak of chikungunya in West Darfur, where we have 248 people.
In West Darfur we have which have been diagnosed with this disease.
Again, mosquitoes are the culprit.
The worst disease and the most lethal disease is in fact malaria.
There's over 1.1 million malaria cases as of the end of September this year across the country, and malaria has reached epidemic levels in 15 out of the 18 states in Sudan.
HealthPartners, including the UN, is of course responding to this.
In support of the government's response, they have procured and distributed what we call interagency emergency health kits to support malaria treatment and other health needs.
However, there's still significant shortages in malaria supplies to address the current endemic levels.
Now this secondary looming emergency happens at a time when the health component of the response plans in Sudan is significantly underfunded.
Partners on the ground tells us that they urgently, urgently need $25 million to address this issue.
In context, I just want to mention that the overall appeal including health, of course, and all other sectors in Sudan is $1.6 billion and it's currently only 48% funded.
So a severe need of of urgent funding to address the issue of vector borne diseases that are now threatening people in Sudan.
Are there any questions for Yens anyone in the room?
I see Lisa Schlein from Voice of America has a question.
Good morning, Jens, bearer of good tidings as usual.
First, would you please send us your notes?
It would be very helpful.
And then you said that kits were being sent for malaria.
What is being done for the other vector borne diseases that you mentioned?
And is the COVID pandemic acting as a barrier to efforts to try to help people with vector borne diseases?
I would imagine that WHO is closely involved in the health aspects of this, right?
First, I, I will send you my my notes immediately after that.
There you have much more if you like technical details about this.
Of course, all the diseases are being addressed with the resources that we have available.
So that is malaria, it's viral hemorrhagic field, which in itself encompasses a number of of of diseases.
So that is that is being being addressed.
And the third part of your question was, I'm sorry, Lisa, can you repeat the third part of your question please?
The the third part had to do with the COVID pandemic and what what impact that is having upon your efforts to try to deal with all of these other diseases.
Well, COVID is, is is of course a big issue.
There's almost 14,000 people now confirmed with who have contracted COVID-19 and some more than 800 people who have died from that.
So that is a exacerbating factor.
One of the things that the partners on the ground are actually mentioning, trying to get these emergency health kits out in the communities and particularly among the many internally displaced people.
There's almost 2,000,000 internally displaced people in Sudan.
Is that the the floods and the stagnant water is still hampering access to those people.
So it it is difficult to to actually get the supplies out in the field.
Are there any other questions for Yens, either in the room or online?
So Yens, thank you very much for being with us this morning and we are going to move right along to the World Health Organisation.
Margaret Harris, our colleague, is on line with Doctor Olufemi Oladapo, the Head of Maternal and Perinatal Health Unit at WHO, and Doctor Rajiv Bal, the head of the Newborn Health unit in the Department of Maternal, Newborn, Child and Adolescent Health at an Ageing at WHO and one of the study coordinators.
They're going to be talking to you about a new study that is to be published in the New England Medical Journal, and I understand that it's embargoed until 6:00 PM this evening, but Margaret will give you all the details.
Do we have Margaret online?
You're cutting up a little bit.
My Internet connection's not so great.
So yeah, you've heard about dexamethasone and COVID.
You've heard that it's, it's had a good effect on reducing mortality, but it's actually been around for a very long time.
And for a very long time it has been saving premature babies in wealthy countries.
But there was a big question around what what its role was in resource for settings.
Now this study has answered that question.
And I'll hand right over to, oh also the study I've sent, we've sent the embargoed media release just to the palate.
It should be in your emails right now.
But I'll hand over to Femi to tell you all about the study right now.
Yes, we hear you very well.
Good morning, colleagues.
On behalf of several recycle operators from Bangladesh, India, Nigeria, Kenya and Pakistan, I'm pleased to share with you the highlights of our WHO Legs trial on a steroid preparation that we're all very familiar with that is dexamethasone.
And as Margaret just said that dexamethasone has just been proven to be an effective treatment agent for a severe COVID-19.
However, dexamethasone is not a new drug.
It's been around for for several years and it's used for preventing minor term mortality among pre term infants has been known for a long time.
However, the use has been prevalent mostly in **** income setting where trials have shown this to be beneficial.
As many of you know, there's a huge disparity between the survival rates of pre term infants in **** income setting compared to low resource setting.
And because of the very low rate of use of dexamethasone or steroids in general during antenatal care for women who are at risk of preterm labour.
Researchers have always thought that by scaling up the use of steroid administration amongst these women, we could substantially reduce preterm infant mortality and mobility.
So around 2011, the National Institutes of Health sponsored a large trial in and six low and middle income countries to demonstrate that by scaling up the use of the examinator zone, you can actually improve return infant survival.
Unfortunately, the result of this study showed a negative result.
We realised that at population level in that in the triad that was conducted back then, scaling up of antenatal desaminator zone actually led to increase in still birth, newborn preferred pretermed infant, newborn deaths as well as infections in the model.
So this safety concerns sort of reopened the debate about the efficacy of dexamethasone in the not just generally but also in the context where there are minimal resources for taking care of women and babies.
So who stood up rules of to address this controversy by conducting an efficacy trial among women at risk of preterm birth in low resource countries to determine whether the medication actually does more harm than good.
And unlike the NIH sponsored trial, we have criticised that steroids would be effective if pregnant women could receive basic type of care and the preterm infants that are born could also receive immune package of care.
So we train healthcare providers on how to identify women at risk of Britain as well as we provided some basic facilities to support care for the Britain infants.
So we recruited 2852 women between the gestational age of 26 weeks and 33 weeks and six days across 29 secondary and tertiary level hospitals in India, Kenya, Bangladesh, Nigeria and Pakistan.
And we randomly assigned them to having added diacetameter zone or a placebo injection.
Although preterm infant mortality in this population remains a little bit **** with about 2020% overall, we found that diacetameter zone was associated with 16% reduction in the incidence of neonatal mortality within the 1st 28 days of life.
And our analysis showed that we needed to treat 2025 women to save one pre time baby's life.
When we looked at all the babies altogether, we also realised that death of any baby was reduced by at least by 12% overall in this population.
What we found very interesting as well is that all of the other things like within the use of respiratory support for the baby, like a use of CPAP machine death within the first seven days of life were also supportive of the overall finding.
Despite the clinical benefit that we found, we realised that there was also no increase in outcomes that could be suggestive of harms such as maternal infection or low blood sugar in the babies, which was something that people are really worried about previously.
So we concluded that what made a difference to newborn survival was not just dexamethasone, but the fact that additional resources were provided to support accurate identification of women who are likely to give give pre term birth.
At the same time, we provided certain some resources to support pre term infants when they were born.
In summary, dexamethasone which is a relatively cheap and widely available medication can save pre term infants also in low income settings.
And we're quite excited that this trial has laid to rest the controversy around whether steroids have benefits in settings where there's, you know, we don't have a **** quality Matella and need one care provided we can provide, we can have some basic facilities for mothers and newborn.
We also believe that the success of this trial was not just all the things that I described, but the a huge emphasis on the collaboration between maternal health experts and newborn health experts, from the WHOHQ down to the hospitals where these plans were conducted.
And for us to be able to achieve this benefit in any of these countries, we need to ensure a close collaboration between obstetricians, paediatricians, haematologists and everybody working both with the mother and the baby to ensure that these benefits are achieved.
I think in short, you know, the, the, the, the main point is that while we can see dexamethasone works, there is no shortcut to **** quality maternal and newborn care.
I'm here with my colleague, Dr Radhuda from the sister Department of Nature.
I will be happy to respond to any of your questions.
Is Mr Balan saying a few words or he's just ready to take some questions?
Margaret, ready to take questions?
Do you want to say anything?
Then we'll go to some questions.
Are there any questions in the room?
I don't see any, but I see that Christian Uluri from the Deutsche Press Agency has her hand raised.
So Chris Christian, thank you very much.
I do have a question, but it's not relating to this study.
So I will defer to my colleagues.
It's a question for WHO, but not on this study.
So let's let's just wait to see if there are any specific questions on the report for our guests.
And I don't see any questions in the room or online.
So I guess your, your, your briefing, Doctor Alabado was very, very clear.
And journalists will be eager to wait, I guess, for the, for the, the study and the information.
If they have additional questions, they will be in touch with Margaret, I guess, and they they can put you in touch with, she can put you in touch with them.
We go back then to Christian from German Press Agency with your question for WHO.
It's a question to Margaret.
Are you planning something on World Polio Day tomorrow?
I have been trying to find out, but it's been a bit difficult.
So I was wondering whether you're going to put out any study or statement on that.
Yes, there will be something on that and in fact the DG is going to announce that this afternoon at the press up.
But thanks for being ahead of the curve.
In fact, it's a follow up on Christiana's question regarding polio.
Would it be possible to have some documents under embargo and not wait for the last minutes?
It would be very convenient if we could get some infos early, I mean this this morning or early this afternoon because of deadlines for for newspapers.
That's that's a very good point.
And in fact, I was going to meet with Olivier from the project department at the same time as this process.
So I'll just put that to after this pressure and I'll let him know, you know, that we need to get this out and that there's a lot of interest, which is great.
Are there any other questions for Margaret?
Hi Margaret, Quick question.
President Bolsonaro said that he will not buy Chinese vaccine because of its origin.
Well, let's put it like this.
Do you choose nationality when you when you take decisions on vaccines?
And will there be enough vaccines in the world if the Chinese are not part of this story?
It's not about nationality.
That's the the beauty of a multilateral.
That's the that's the point of the United Nations.
We choose the the, the science and we choose the best vaccine.
And as you know, we're not going to back any vaccine until it's proven to be have the highest safety profile and have the right level of efficacy.
I think your second question on distribution, that's exactly why we have the Kovac facility.
That's why we have the ACT accelerator.
It needs to be distributed to the people at highest risk simultaneously in order for us all to end this outbreak.
OK, Thank you very much, Margaret.
We have some more questions, but I do need to give you this important message that we have just been asked to share with you.
A note of note to correspondence is about to be going out.
This is to inform you that at 11:15 on 23rd of October 2020, at the United Nations Office in Geneva, the delegations of the Libya 5 + 5 Joint Military Committee will sign an agreement resulting from the deliberations that took place this week.
The signing will be broadcast live on webtv.un.org and on onsmail Facebook page and will be followed by a press conference by the Assistant Secretary Special Representative of the Secretary General, Stephanie Williams at 12 noon today in this very room, Room 14 of the Paledinacion.
So we're moving the press conference up half an hour.
A live broadcast feed will be available from UNTV, Geneva and Enrico.
I understand that we will be able to broadcast the the signing thing ceremony from here.
So if you want to stay in the room, you can do so or watch it for the people listening to us online.
You are able to watch it on webtv.un.org.
This will be in exactly about 9 minutes.
Maybe we we'll take just a couple of additional questions, but then we'll close here so that we can move to this very important development in the Libyan talks.
Yesterday at the debate, President Trump said that the the vaccine will be ready in some weeks.
So I don't know if he has another information, but do you think that the vaccine could be ready, any vaccine in a few weeks?
So Gabriella, all the different vaccines, there are a lot of vaccines in phase three.
We've the information we have is that 10 have entered phase three, but they've entered at different stages.
You know the first one that went into phase three went in about July.
Now the importance of Phase 3 is you're testing in the real world and you're looking, you're giving it half to people, half get the real vaccine, half get a different vaccine or a dummy vaccine.
And you have to do a really solid analysis of the data when it comes back to look at safety and efficacy.
So we as WHO we're not backing as I said before, any vaccine until we know it's of the highest safety and the and the appropriate efficacy.
OK, Peter Kenny, you have a very quick question for Margaret, actually.
You answered my question.
Let's take Anyes Pedrero online.
We both show her we and yes, we said a concern.
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We're going to have to cut this short shortly yes, it's for Margaret and I'll be very quick.
Hi Margaret nice to see you going back to the vaccines.
I understand what you're saying you've answered the questions.
However, both China and Russia seem to have issued their vaccines prematurely.
Perhaps they are vaccinating people before the clinical trials have been completed.
Is this a wise thing to do or is this potentially dangerous?
What we want to see and what's going to start is something called a head to head of all the ones that have reached the stage where they're in this phase three, where you're you're testing it in the general population.
And what we are beginning is something called, it's the solidarity trial.
You'll be familiar with the one for drugs.
We're doing the same for vaccines.
And we will be putting the different candidates against each other, so you can see which one comes out as most efficacious and safe.
I think we're going to close the briefing here so that we can get on to this ceremony in a few minutes.
So to those online, again, you can watch this on webtv.un.org.
And for those in the room, we're going to bring down the screen, I guess, so that you can watch this live.
Thank you very much everyone, and good afternoon.
