The AJK President Sardar Masood Khan has stressed the need for activating global health diplomacy to project future threats of pandemics and create platforms to consolidate the resources and solutions offered by multilateral organisations, governments, private sector and research institutions. The AJK president made these remarks while speaking as chief guest at a seminar on ‘Pandemic Preparedness: Science and Countermeasures,’ organised by Dr Zabta Shinwari of Quaid-e-Azam University.
“During the current Covid-19 pandemic, it has become clear that the World Health Organisation should be put at the centre stage to provide overall leadership and decision-making for combating pandemics,” he said.
He said that Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) was a landmark in prohibiting the use of weapons of mass destruction. Both conventional wisdom and scientific evidence indicate that the outbreak of the coronavirus was accidental. However, he maintained the biggest threat to humanity in this century has come not from chemical or nuclear weapons but from a single-stranded pathogen – coronavirus.
Khan said that as president of the 2006 BWC Review Conference and as chairman of the 2007 BWC States Parties, he had emphasised on enabling the regime to monitor and foresee threats substantiated by rapid scientific and technological evidence. “We have learnt the hard way that the potential range and lethality of viruses are no less than that of bio-weapons,” he added.
