BY GAETANO EZRA
KAMPALA, Uganda|SHIFTMEDIA| Uganda now has hit the 1000 mark for the COVID-19 cases, ministry of Health just confirmed. The latest 23 new cases from the 3, 316 samples that were tested by the Ministry of Health topped up the previous figures rising to make the tally to 1000.
Dr Henry Mwebesa, the Director-General Health Services, said out of the 23 confirmed cases, 12 are Ugandan nationals who returned from abroad; 8 from Afghanistan, 3 from DRC, and 1 from South Sudan.
“They were under quarantine at the time of testing,” Dr Mwebesa said.
“To date, Uganda has registered a total of 908 COVID-19 recoveries including both Ugandans and non-Ugandans who were admitted here because they could not be repatriated immediately.”
Uganda has not recorded any COVID-19 related death.
WHO appoints committee to evaluate response to Covid-19 crisis
To recap on what was just announced by the World Health Organization chief, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the UN health body is appointing a committee to evaluate the global response to the coronavirus pandemic and make recommendations for an enhanced system of global health governance.
The WHO is yet to publish any further details on what this evaluation committee, to be led by Helen Clark, the former prime minister of New Zealand, and Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the former president of Liberia, is supposed to be about.
From what I can gather from the contents of Tedros’s speech, its aim is to evaluate “national surveillance and response systems, how we shared information with our communities, and whether we earned their trust, how we governed, and whether our global health architecture is fit for purpose.”
It comes off the back of a resolution passed in during the World Health Assembly in May, where the WHO’s 194 member states (which no longer include the US, of course) agreed to “recognise the role of the leadership role of WHO and the role of the UN system in coordinating the comprehensive global response” to coronavirus, and other global pandemics.
“It called on Member States to implement a whole-of-government and whole-of-society approach to ensure a more coherent, fairer and effective global response [and] it called for the fair distribution of vaccines, diagnostics, and therapeutics,” Tedros said.
Tedros said that the panel’s terms of reference are yet to developed and that the remaining members of the panel will be selected by the two co-chairs from candidates proposed by member states.
It is due to present an interim report in November, and a full report in May. Tedros’s comments suggest its goal is to design a model for global health governance that will coordinate responses to future outbreaks, and other challenges such as antimicrobial resistance, inequality, and the climate crisis.
He added: “This cannot be another blue-ribbon panel that issues a report that goes up on the bookshelf. We must come together in a global conversation, to take these hard-won lessons and turn them into action.
“My friends, make no mistake. The greatest threat we face now is not the virus itself.
“Rather, it is the lack of leadership and solidarity at the global and national levels. We cannot defeat this pandemic as a divided world.”
Shift Media News 
