 Ladies and gentlemen, we have spent some considerable time together over the last two years or more. And may I start out by thanking everybody who has participated with their wisdom, their experience, their knowledge and their time that they've devoted to this collective exercise. In trying to come to some recommendations that will be useful to all sorts of different countries as they face a universal phenomenon, which is the pandemic, but to which as we have seen so many countries have reacted in so many different ways. We also have found that as all challenges and catastrophes, because this was a catastrophe in many countries, as they have a custom of doing, there's been a polarization of opinions, a confrontation of views about what is really happening first of all. And it's amazing how many different interpretations could be put on the same events. It just shows how the French clinician, very famous mission Claude Bernard of the 19th century had a famous saying which I used to teach to my to my students in experimental psychology and psycho psychopharmacology that a fact means nothing by itself. A fact only means take some meaning from the theory or a theoretical context into which it is embedded. So that we have, I think, in our experience and our work together, we have been able to witness that among ourselves within the larger group, the Lancet COVID-19 group that we are part of. But also in the countries we come from, and in other countries that we have seen around the world, that there have been quite different interpretations of what is happening, how it is happening, never mind why it is happening, that's of course the worst of all, and how one should deal with it. Many politicians have been chastised by their electors for what were considered egregious errors in handling the beginning of the pandemic. Others have strengthened their position, particularly in authoritarian regimes, by using the strategy in responding to a challenge like a pandemic by using it to their advantage. We in our group, which is after all a small part of humanity and a small part of expertise available in the world. I do believe we have tried to be as objective and as fair in our interpretation of the facts, in the way we have gathered the facts, and in the recommendations that we have presented in the hope that the conclusions we have come to and the recommendations which obviously must be only considered as appropriate at this time on the basis of the available evidence and to the best of our knowledge, and which may have to be changed a year from now or 10 years from now or anything else. We are not claiming to have the absolute truth cast in stone and giving the absolute answers to the problems, but I do think that we have been women and men of goodwill in working together. And may I say that I personally have truly appreciated getting to know you and your opinions and your manner of working and of thinking. Without this commission, I wouldn't have met many of you and it would have been a great loss to my life. So may I just say thank you very much to us, to George, to Gabriella, to all of you with whom we have interacted. It has been truly an edifying experience to work together. And it is my hope that our efforts have not been in vain. And that the reports that we have submitted will be of use in, if not in this country than in another, and that they will find some leadership that will be inspired to continue working on the challenges that the pandemic represents. Thank you very much for your contribution. Thank you so much. On behalf of SCSN and the Center for Sustainable Development of Columbia University, I would like to thank Dr. Vajra Vikeh Praiburka, former president of the Republic of Latvia and co-chair of our task force on humanitarian relief, social protection and vulnerable groups. During the acute phase of the pandemic, this task force of the Lancet Commission focused on the humanitarian and social consequences of the pandemic. Its effect on different vulnerable groups and policies to decrease inequalities caused by the pandemic. And the task force had three core chairs and 19 distinguished experts from around the world. And now after Madam President, I would like to give the floor to Ms. Gabriela Cuevas Barron, co-chair of UHC 2030 and honorary president of the Inter-Parliamentary Union and former senator in the Mexican Congress. So the floor is yours Ms. Cuevas Barron. Thank you very much Olga and by thanking you, it's not only for giving me the floor. Thank you for your hard work, for your coordination of this amazing group. I mean, I'm not sure if we have had achieved all these mindstones during these two years without you. So thanks to you and of course please extend our gratitude to all the amazing team that were helping us, advising us, sending us information. So thank you, thank you so much. I would like also to thank the coaches, Madam President, I have learned so much from you. And of course I must say that George underlined very important aspects of social protection systems for this amazing group. I believe that if we take a look of what we have done over these last two years, honestly, we should be very proud of our results. The first of those results is the amazing composition of this task force, and that composition is reflected on the outcomes. The first important outcome was that this tax force was able to publish the first report at the Lancet. That is not a minor step. I mean, all the different tax forces were working very hard. But we were able to give more visibility to all the different vulnerabilities that are affecting different populations. And some of those vulnerabilities, as we said on that paper, are overlapped. So they are affecting even more to certain specific groups. This was important not only because we made a relevant literature review. It was important because we were able to give precise recommendations in terms of policy, and we can divide those recommendations into groups. The second one is universal health coverage that of course personally I feel very happy to have that one included, not only because we are here because of the pandemic but also because that's the only way to get all the world really protected for future And the second one again, it was mentioned several times by George and the UNICEF team are social protection systems. We need to learn the lesson from the pandemic. Systemic inequalities made a difference between life and death. Yes, the virus was new. We have very, very few information at the beginning of the pandemic. But really, if we take a look to what we studied over these last two years. It was about systemic inequalities that decided, for example, with those comorbidities and comorbidities are there because we were not able to protect people. It was also about the skin color about the income that our countries have about the accessibility to enter to our health system, or to have social protection. So I believe that this first publication was very important from a policy point of view, but also very relevant for the COVID-19 Commission with the Lancet. We decided to go further. And we took an important decision in terms of delivering the policy papers that we are about to present. We know that universal health coverage and social protection systems are important itself. But we know that building the bridge between these important concepts in terms of a scientific publication, but building the bridge, all the way to make these two issues universal health coverage and social protection systems are reality for all people everywhere. That is going to make a huge difference. I mean, now, regardless of what we published, half of the world population cannot access essential health services. And if we take a look to other, I think, very terrible data, over five million children under five years old died in 2020. And mothers continue to die during childbirth with the maternal mortality ratio at 152 deaths per 100,000 live birds in 2020. Noncommunicable diseases are still there. The challenges are there and some of the systemic inequality that we would like to fight are not only visible, but they are exacerbated now after the pandemic. I believe that what this ambitious task force is doing is going to be very relevant because we are going to translate those important concepts into public policy and concrete deliverables for society governments, local governments, parliamentarians, private sector and even international organizations. I feel very proud of the result that we have achieved and I feel very honored to have shared these two years with you. Again, thank you very much for the lessons. Thank you very much for the outcomes. Thank you very much for our passion to make good concepts translated into concrete realities for the people all over the world. So thank you very much members of the task force. Again, thank you very much to the co-chairs and thank you so much for our wonderful team that made all these great ideas a reality for the task force and for the COVID-19 commission with the Lancet. I'll get back to you and thank you again. Thank you so much, Ms. Cueves-Varón and thanks to our co-chairs and task force experts for their time and contribution. Now we'll continue with our speakers, our task force experts, who will be talking about how the pandemic affected population groups with different vulnerabilities and what are some of the policy and practice recommendations from the task force. So I first would like to invite Dr. Catherine Zappon, former minister for children and youth affairs of Ireland and currently a visiting scholar at Fordham University Low School. Today her presentation will focus on children and youth. So the floor is yours, Dr. Zappon. Thank you. Thank you so much, Oscar. And may I begin as well to return my affection, especially to Madam President and to our co-chair, to you, Oscar, and your team. And really as the couple of other speakers have already said, you know, having had the opportunity to be with so many incredible human beings as well as great experts and academics and policymakers. So it's wonderful to share this moment with you all again. I'm going to say a few words then about our policy brief that we put together on children and young people. And may I start by saying I suppose that we begin and end these few pages and they looked terrific, well done again, Oscar and team. We begin and end that brief with an expression of hope that is grounded in top class data, as well as the shared experiences of thought leaders, academics, policy and lawmakers and implementers, these are the people that I've had the privilege of working with. So our policy and practice recommendations are not aspirational in the impossible sense of that word, rather they are pragmatic. And even some are based on the actual implementation of these in some nations, and all with a clear awareness, a clear awareness of the political compromises, and the NGO and civic activity, advocacy and mobilization. It's necessary to get these kinds of things done. And, you know, I get Gabriella refers to the, the import of turning good concepts into reality as she concluded her, she concluded her remarks. The title of our brief is Apollo, a pandemic generation is not inevitable. That title it's inspired by the work during COVID times of Erwin and Karen Redliner members of our task force, we're putting forward with that title the proposition that in five years, or perhaps 10 years in time, the impact of this generation will not be embedded as a central part of the body, mind and spirit of our children and young people who live through it. They won't have to carry it in a heavy fashion. It will not be a substantial block to their development and their human flourishing this is our hope with these kinds of recommendations. We want people to review the recommendations in that light. They're not a shopping list. We have prioritized them. And it wasn't easy to do and prioritizing in this sense means that we made a judgment that if a country or a member state does these things, then the foundations are the foundations are the foundation for the health and well being of our children and young people. And these foundations also hold the potential to trigger other policies and programs that help to secure these objectives in a sustainable way. We start our brief with, of course, the latest stats that we had at the time of writing it on the impact of COVID on children and young people and again Gabriella already shared with us that terrible statistic of how many children died. Our stats note the exacerbation or the magnification of the numbers of who fall below the line of poverty, whose health and protection services have been diminished or cut off and the childcare and early learning deficits in developing and moving things to settings, noting, however, in our hopeful fashion that as we put a spotlight, for example, on young people living in Africa, especially where they're soaring numbers of unemployed, there are ideas being generated. There are ideas being invested in and implemented so that these new generations are fully empowered to realize their best potential. And now just in, you know, the last couple of minutes just note a couple of policy recommendations and practice recommendations that we outlined in the brief. Policy recommendations, first of all, to start with the youngest and to progressively realize universal child benefits, a cash payment. Absolutely proven impact on reducing the poverty of children, and it's a practical program that can be rapidly scaled. Secondly, we also argued for legislating for and building public or public private models of early learning and childcare systems and services, which means not only must services be built and run, but that they ought to be deployed as a partnership for the public good. Early learning cannot be left to the private market alone in developing or developed context, and then a couple of practice recommendations that we also targeted to be foundational and just let me mention two as I said here. First of all, that governments and parliaments should establish systems and processes to hear directly from representatives of children and young people and their vision and recommendations for this now post COVID era, or you know, as we note some countries aren't really in the post COVID era, but we call for direct dialogue between parliamentary members and young people. And that the recommendations that result from such a dialogue should find their way to being central to not only national dialogue, but to two actions of change such as a resolution or active parliament, but to international dialogue as well in the EU or the African Union, and that furthermore these the results of these deliberative proceedings should not simply be discussed in children and young people sessions, but within parliamentary or decision making committees on social protection and universal health coverage. What I wanted to highlight was the making of financial commitments to improve access to and availability of mental health supports for children and young people in response to the COVID crisis and beyond. Mental health is growing in its elusiveness for our children and young people. And then with a note of what we held in common I think with all members of the task force that we must create space at the decision making tables of all levels of governance to understand the needs and hopes of the full range of diverse populations. They have to be at the tables, they have to speak in their own voices. And so to do this we need to invest more in community organizations and the full makeup of civil society, because they reach citizens and residents in ways that governments often do not. Such investment is a sure bet to pay off in the medium to the long term. So now's the time a pandemic generation is not inevitable. So thank you for letting us present our ideas here today. Thank you so much. And now I would like to invite Mr. Anders Johnson, distinguished international consultant from Sweden. Mr. Johnson's work focuses on the defense of democracy, human rights and gender equality and today his presentation will focus on gender inequalities. So the floor is yours. Mr. Johnson, thank you. Thank you very much for giving me this opportunity to send the paper. And like others, before me, I'd like to start by thanking you by thanking the Lancet COVID-19 Commission for giving us this opportunity to address women and gender issues relating to the pandemic. I would also thank specifically my co-authors, and as Nina and Danji, policy advisor for gender equality, HIV and health at UN Women, and Hinya Dakak, head of policy and business unit at UNFBA. That's been a privilege to work together with both of you. The paper that we are presenting or I'm presenting right now is not a policy paper. It is a paper that focuses on providing practice recommendations. But in its introduction, it does make two very fundamental points. The first is that COVID-19 has disproportionately affected women and girls in a whole range of areas, not just health. In fact, it has had the effect of erasing painstakingly slow progress towards gender equality that has taken place over these past decades. The second point the paper makes is that the pandemic has amply demonstrated the interconnectivity and the intersectionality of issues. Ensuring women's health cannot be done and achieved by simply addressing their health concerns and issues. One needs to resolve matters relating to a whole host of issues relating to the full spectrum of women's rights, including their security, care services, education, employment, and poverty. The paper therefore suggests that action is needed simultaneously in seven interconnected and interrelated policy areas. They are gender-based violence, access to health services and social protection, funding for health services for women and girls, the care economy, gender responsive employment policies, participation in all decision making processes at all levels. And of course, progress towards gender equality. The bulk of the paper centers on a set of 35 recommendations for good practices addressed to governments, to parliaments, to the private sector, to civil society organizations and to international organizations. They are formulated as concretely and as specifically as possible to facilitate action. We have consciously started with recommendations addressing gender-based violence. This was already a pandemic in itself with at least a third of all women in the world experiencing physical and or sexual violence from an intimate partner or sexual violence from a non-partner in the course of her lifetime. During the COVID-19 pandemic, these figures have skyrocketed and seven out of every 10 women have reported that abuse by a partner has become more common. The recommendations focus on prevention and response services. It highlights special measures to detect and care for cases of gender-based violence. It underscores the need for training of relevant staff of services that may one point or another be in contact with victims and of course of enforcement officials. Much of these and the ensuing recommendations are by nature addressed to governments. They are after all responsible for providing protection and services to citizens. But in particular case, let me nonetheless highlight also the importance of recommendations addressed, for example, to parliaments. Many parliaments closed at least partially during the lockdowns and were not able to fully perform their multiple functions. Hence, I would like to underscore the many recommendations that this paper addresses to parliaments suggesting that their actions are crucial in holding governments to account. And fundamentally to bring a citizen's perspective into policy and lawmaking. To mention but a couple of examples. There are many more in the report. The report assumes and shows that everyone can do a lot better than they have done so far. That is true for governments and that's true for parliaments, but it's equally so for the private sector for civil society organizations and indeed for international organizations. The paper provides practice recommendations to all of them in the hope that all can draw necessary lessons from this time pandemic and adapt programs procedures and working methods accordingly. Not least to include women on an equal footing in all decision making processes. Recently, governments have started work on a possible future treaty for similar international instrument on pandemic preparedness. One of the concluding recommendations to governments which I would like to highlight. The paper also asked them, the government and negotiators to ensure that such an instrument is gender sensitive that it responds to the particular needs of women and girls. And that it employs a gender sensitive language. That we have at our disposal, of course, does not allow for presentation of each one of the practice recommendations. But I would like to make a general comment about their nature and relevance. Each and when one of these recommendations is formulated with an ambitious goal in mind and builds on experiences often, not exclusively, but often gave in countries who can have adequate resources to try them out. That does not, however, make them irrelevant to other countries. On the contrary, when countries must have a political will to address issues that those dealt with in this paper, they also look for experiences and examples that can assist them. Let me add that there are maybe two countries in the world that I probably know better than most others. One is my own country, Sweden, and the other is what I call my adopted country, Mexico. Certain parts of Mexico, particularly those that are located in the south of the country, which is also the part that I know the best, have a poverty and extreme poverty level that is fully compatible with some of the least developed countries in Africa and Asia. Yet, when Mexico these last couple of years has started to develop a care system, they have looked particularly to Sweden for inspiration. This has nothing to do with me. These are Mexican women and men who find the Swedish experience relevant for what they want to achieve. I mentioned this because I don't think we should feel that we are writing for an exclusive or privileged audience. On the contrary, these recommendations are relevant to all countries everywhere. And with those few words, I leave it to you to look at the paper and wait for details. Of course, we are here to respond to any questions you may have. Thank you. Thank you. We would like to thank Mr. Johnson for his talk and to all the co-authors for their contributions with a gender lens. For your information, the open access publications of the Task Force, including the policy briefs regarding different vulnerabilities can be found on the Lancet Commission's website, both on the Task Force page and on the Publications page. Now I would like to invite Dr. Isaac Inolua Olufa-Biba from Nigeria. He is the Executive Director of the Slum and Rural Health Initiative, which is a nonprofit organization that delivers quality healthcare in underserved communities. Today, his presentation will focus on persons living with disabilities. For the floor is yours, Dr. Isaac. Yes, thank you very much. And thank you to all our co-chairs for like leading this very important work. And I would really want to appreciate the co-author of I Have Us Day. Thank you so much for contributing to this paper. And I would really start my talk by giving like a little bit of background into the world of people living with disabilities. And it's very important to note that about 15% of the world's population right now, which is estimated as over one billion people live with a form of disability. And this is approximately the population of three continents like North America, South America, and Oceania, Australia, which includes over 35 countries and several dependent territories. People living with disabilities, they face several constraints, which includes barriers to implementing basic hygiene practices, healthcare affordability limitations on healthcare insurance, limited employment opportunities, and discriminatory legislation and stigma. And what we see from all these intersecting challenges, we see that many of them were exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. And also, we know that people living with disabilities may face substantial difficulties in functioning, necessitating the frequent use of healthcare services, which we also know about the possibility of transmission of COVID-19 healthcare facilities. And we know that people living with disabilities not only need access to healthcare, they also need access to other critical services such as social protection services, income security, mental healthcare, which is very important, and also communication technology. So our key policy recommendations includes and which I would just really summarize because of the purpose of time is to ensure that all people persons with disabilities have constant access to healthcare services and social protection that are appropriate for their needs, to prioritize funding for the healthcare for these services, to provide the social economic opportunities, especially employment opportunities for people living with disabilities, and also to ensure that the people living with disabilities have equal and full participation in all decision making processes at all levels, especially in the old local communities. This comes without saying like nothing about us, no, without us. And before talking about our practice recommendations, which are detailed in the paper, it is important to understand that because of the kind of intersecting challenges that people persons with disabilities have, there's a need for an integrated approach to solving these challenges. And we suggest that this approach should not just be intersectoral between multiple sectors, but also a collaborative effort among different institutions, such as the government, international nonprofit organizations, nonprofit organizations should work together for people with disabilities, and especially also the private sector. And more importantly, to include them in the decision making process in policies, in programs, and in other things that is being done to help them. So to summarize our practice recommendations, which are categorized by different institutions, we believe that governments should ensure that medical decisions, especially should be made fairly and then data on mobility, mortality indicators for persons with disabilities, you know, should be collected and analyzed, interpreted in a routine manner. And this is one thing that we also encourage like researchers to also do, collect information and data on people with disabilities, definitely to support research on this issues to ensure accessible treatment, especially mental health care for people with disabilities, and to provide training, especially disability-sensitive training to service providers to be able to provide the needed services for persons with disabilities. And to ensure that they have like good access to communication and also to remote work, especially in their employment. We detailed several other practice recommendations, which you will find more in details in many of the, in the paper, but also one important thing is to ensure that human health is seen as a concept of human right to promote public good, and vaccines should be available to persons with disabilities, especially in developing countries where we are seeing some elements of form of vaccinating inequities, and also to commit to funding and integrating health and social services for persons with disabilities. Some of the things that will require international obligations, non-profits and private sector should ensure that there's technical guidance and information, especially on accessibility in the development of local capacity, and in response to persons with disabilities, and to really see them not only as beneficiaries, but also as change agents who can contribute to their own development, their implementation of programs and policies in their sector, and also to build the capacity of organizations for persons with disabilities to proactively confront stigma and discrimination, because we know that they face several elements of this. Workplaces should definitely ensure flexible work arrangements, including teleworking, which is something that is very valuable in this context, and workplaces to ensure that this psychosocial mental health support should be provided to them, and also definitely to improve the capacity of service providers to respond to the specific needs of persons with disabilities to prevent abuse and neglect in institutional settings. Thank you very much, and it's really nice presenting this. Thank you so much, Dr. Ertik, for your leadership for the policy document on persons with disabilities. Next, I would like to invite Professor Samaa Karabey from Turkey. Professor Karabey works as a faculty member at Istanbul University School of Medicine Department of Public Health, and Professor Karabey will be talking about migrants with a special focus on forcibly displaced populations. So the floor is yours, Professor Karabey. Thank you, Özge. Hi, everyone. Firstly, I would like to express my sincere thanks to the- Professor Karabey, I'm so sorry. It's still quite difficult to hear you. I don't know what we did last time that made the audio better. Okay, okay. Maybe it's me. Yeah, I will try. Now, okay. You're welcome. First, I would like to express my sincere thanks to co-chairs of this wonderful group, and of course to Özge, for opening the way for our work. Now, I would like to present the policy and recommendation brief of our subgroup. Can you see my slides now? Yes, they're in PowerPoint view. I don't know if you want to make them present here. Yep. Great. And of course, I would like to express my sincere thanks to the co-authors of this section to Hania Dekak from UNFPA and Özge, Canada. Our group was forcibly displaced populations. And so, under this heading, we tried to cover refugees, asylum seekers, stateless people, and internally displaced persons. As we know, all of those people's populations face serious health and social consequences due to conditions that put them at risk, such as limited access to safe housing, sufficient and nutritional food, safe workplaces, water, sanitation, healthcare, clean energy, and educational opportunities, etc. And the COVID-19 pandemic, of course, has exacerbated these conditions and hence had a detrimental effect on the possibly displaced populations. There are already some barriers in accessing healthcare in terms of possibly displaced populations, such as out-of-pocket expenses, distance from facilities, language barriers, stigma provider acceptance, etc., etc. And so, all of these barriers were further challenged by the pandemic. On the other hand, of course, accessing healthcare is not the only thing in terms of health of forcibly displaced persons or populations. And so, a social determinants of health approach and intersectoral collaboration is needed in order to complement the positive results. With this view, with this point of view, we tried to develop some policy recommendations and also some practice recommendations to governments and also to international organizations. Now, I will try to summarize those recommendations. Firstly, ensuring effective intersectoral collaboration to strengthen collective outcomes. And strengthen participation, consultation, and empowerment of all forcibly displaced populations in decision-making and programmatic intervention. Also, strengthen monitoring of community health programs and promote and support equitable provision of healthcare services. Also, strengthen health supply chains to include the additional needs of displaced populations are also important. So, sorry, as we come to practice, governments, we believe that governments should follow the multi-sectoral health approach in all practices. Because the health sectors cannot cover all aspects of health issues or needs of forcibly displaced populations because of that the multi-sectoral health approach is hugely important. And also, governments should adopt national health systems to meet the health needs of forcibly displaced populations and should implement practices to ensure universal health coverage with a gender lens. And should include displaced populations into the planning, delivery, and evaluation of national health services. And governments should also identify and address the barriers to access health, social care, and educational services. Should develop specific interventions for hard to reach populations, such as older people, such as disabled people, sexual orientations, LGBTI people, for instance, et cetera, et cetera. In order to access services, including decreasing social, gender, economic, and other barriers. And governments should also monitor the most disadvantaged groups and provide targeted services for groups whose needs may not be adequately met by mainstream services. And governments should provide mental health and psychosocial support, which should be integrated to all levels of health and social care services for forcibly displaced populations as well. And governments should, governments should facilitate and support the activities of local NGOs, including women and youth-led organization working with FDPs. Because we know very well that NGOs are highly effective in accessing the disadvantaged groups and some hard to reach groups as well. And the governments should also provide sexual and reproductive health services, which are among the most disrupted services during the crisis situation, and give special emphasis to women and girls. And governments should provide nutritional support to those in need, especially to displaced populations who face good shortages and nutritional deficiencies. For instance, in the pandemic conditions, we unfortunately witnessed that many refugee groups had difficulty, real difficulties to access the enough food. And in terms of international organizations, we developed some recommendation as well. So we believe that international organizations should support the host governments. Because as all of you know, the most part of the global refugee populations have been hosted by the developing countries. So all kind of resources are already limited. And because of that, support the host governments is hugely important. Support is needed for sustainable inclusion processes, medium to long term financing mechanisms should be developed, including the use of food funding mechanisms to which multiple donors can contribute. International organizations should also maintain the strategic use of cash assistance and should support food supply chains in host countries. Support also local NGOs, as I said just before, because the local NGOs are very effective in working with hard to reach people. And lastly, international organization should advocate and support host countries to collect and report data about forcibly displaced populations, such as demographic and health surveys such as some vital national statistics, et cetera, et cetera. And so as the section authors, we believe that at least some of those recommendations would be realized than the situations, the conditions will be better for the forcibly displaced populations. Thank you for your contribution and for your interest. Yeah, let's get back to you. Thank you, Professor Karabay for sharing the main recommendations with respect to the forcibly displaced populations. Finally, before we move to the Q&A part, we will be displaying the presentation of Professor Peter Lloyd Sherlock from the University of East Anglia. He unfortunately could not join us today due to other commitments, but we will share the presentation that he prepared for us. I'm sorry I can't be with you in person today. Unfortunately, I've teaching commitments that I cannot change. So today I'm going to be talking to you about COVID-19 and older people. As the main commission report notes, since the start of the pandemic, there have been about 18 million excess deaths. And of those, 83% have affected people age 60 years or more. So that's about 15 million excess deaths of older people during the pandemic. Interestingly, about half of all COVID deaths have occurred since the middle of 2021, which is when vaccination rollout for priority groups was already well underway in most countries. Yet, and this may come as news to many of you, many countries did not actually prioritize older people above other age groups. I only have time for one specific example today. In India, by the start of this year, there was no difference in vaccination coverage between older people and younger adults. 62 million older people had received just one dose of vaccine or no dose at all. And of course these were mainly older people who were poor, deprived and living in rural areas. And yet at that time, the national government was shifting its vaccination focus towards children, mainly the children of wealthy families. India has not been an exception. There are many other examples and you can find information about some of these countries on this website. By the way, all these countries had much more than enough vaccination supply to cover older people with two doses, as well as frontline health workers. So this problem was not primarily due to vaccine nationalism. It was due to national priority setting. The case of Brazil has been very different. Despite the appalling anti-vax stance of National President Bolsonaro, Brazil actually managed to achieve almost universal coverage of older people by the end of 2021. So I think Brazil shows what might have been achieved by some of those other countries I've just been discussing. And I think many middle-income countries and low-middle-income countries could have achieved similar levels of coverage had they adopted similar prioritization policies to those of Brazil. This global story of prioritizing wealthy people of all ages ahead of older people in poverty has gone largely unnoticed and unremarked. And yet, in my view, it has been responsible for hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of avoidable deaths during the second half of the pandemic. And I think this is a consequence of the very limited levels of interest in older people's health among those working in global health and international development. Even though more than two-thirds of older people on the planet currently live in the global south, and that proportion is rapidly increasing. You can see this neglect, this marginal status of older people in lots of ways. Even, I'm afraid, considering today's event, in the 91 Lancet commissions on global health and on clinical health. And on this slide I've just listed alphabetically the first of these commissions. But if you went through all 91, you would not find a single commission specifically interested in the health of older people, or how countries need to respond to the challenges of population ageing. And of course, there will be no major UN global report on the pandemic and older people for the foreseeable future. In fact, for me most shocking of all is target 3.4 of the Sustainable Development Goals, which looks to reduce deaths from non-communicable disease, but is a target specifically and exclusively focused on deaths among those aged under 70, placing absolutely no value on survival aged 70 and above. So clearly this SDG is explicitly discriminatory against older people, but again this has gone largely unnoticed. Even if you're not specifically interested in older people, think about what this means for health services. For example, at the end of last year, 13% of NHS hospital beds in the UK were occupied by older people, older people who were considered fit for discharge, but for whom there was no community care in place and so they had to remain in hospital. And we're seeing similar problems emerging very quickly in many developing countries. This is their future. Covid could have been an opportunity to wake the world up to this willful denial, but clearly that hasn't happened. This Lancet Commission lists older people as a vulnerable group, but it doesn't ask why older people are vulnerable. So perhaps more than just thinking about protection for older people. We need to respond to this issue in the same way we do to issues like gender and health. So we need to call for an age responsive approach to pandemics like Covid and to public health more generally. In all countries older people make up a disproportionate amount of the burden of disease. They make up a disproportionate amount of health service use, but they also account for a disproportionate amount of unmet health needs and the consequent suffering that results from those unmet health needs. So I hope these issues get picked up during the discussion. Thank you very much for your time. Thank you, Professor Lloyd Shalock for leading the policy paper about older people and your presentation today. Now I would like to give the floor to Miss Quebez Barrow, who will be moderating the Q&A part. Thank you. Thank you so much, Osge. And before opening the floor for our Q&A session, I would like to invite our co-chair, George Lariat, who just was able to join this webinar. George, you played a very important role at this task force. Your work for social protection systems and fighting inequalities have been always very important. So if you would like to share a message with us, please you have the floor. Thank you very much. Gabriella and Madam President, it's good to see you again. Thank you, Osge. I judge the time. I think there were two links that were sent and, and, and apparently I've got a time wrong. It's been a good journey. Looking back, I think one can think of a few things to say in hindsight, as always, as always, and in life, this helps us. Do you all remember that I was transferred to South Asia in the middle of the pandemic? So I saw the world in a different way. I was working in New York and I got transferred to South Asia. And I saw the world in a different way. So our task, our task force, I think that we've had a lot to offer, looking at the needs of where, of where, of where I work, from where I work now. But the numbers of vulnerable people are just huge. I'll give an example. In South Asia, we have about 620 million children, about 350 million adolescents. About, about, about half of these have various vulnerabilities. So when COVID hit, it just exposed old vulnerabilities. It just combined with COVID to kind of extend the pain of people. So the recommendations that the papers are asking for, I think are relevant. I would have switched to the forum for us to look more at some specific needs. I think the needs are not the same everywhere. I think the debate that is had in the West is very different from the debate that India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Indonesia, Myanmar, and Coa having about COVID. And it's aftermath about how to take care of the needs of the vulnerable. So I guess for me, that's the main takeaway that our groups work, I think, is paramount and we should find a way of continuing the dialogue, knowing that the needs differ across the world. And a little example before I conclude is being on the issue of social protection, whether the flaws or whatever for various groups, including refugees, including elderly and so on. Some governments have exhausted what they can do. They truly exhausted what they can do. Families are stressed. So there has to be new thinking about how to create a different model of development. So just asking them to, just asking them always to expand their fiscal space is not, it's not holding anymore. The war in Ukraine has had a very bad effect where work now, the food prices have gone through the roof. Governments have repurposed their expenditures. So we are in for a run. So again, again, I think looking back, it's been a good journey and thank you and thank you and thank you. And if I were to do this again as part of this group, I would ask that we look at other lenses. And again, in this case, it's a lens of South Asia, which has two billion people. And frankly, what is discussed in the West really is not what is being discussed in the media here. So I'll pause here and have an over to you, Gabriela, but thanks again. Thank you very much, George. And thank you to all the members that presented the very important contributions of each one of these policy papers. I think that we are sure that women and girls forcibly displaced population, children and youth, older people, indigenous populations and people living with disabilities need more specific policies and more specific actions. And as George just mentioned, it is also related to our national and I must say community context. And now I would like to give the floor to our, I see that we have some commissioners here, and I see that we have a lot of participants. So now is the time for our Q&A session. We have some task force members in the audience. I can see Rapsa, Miriam, Ronald, I'm not sure if you would like to take the floor, but I think that we all have a lot of things to share here. We all went through very important experiences and learnings. But the main focus today is how are we going to translate word into actions. That's the inspiration for the policy papers. And as this is perhaps our last activity, we are going to have another session later, but how are we going to make this a more inclusive and fair planet. How are you dealing with those issues that you're on fears? Miriam, Ronald, Rapsa, I think that Phoebe is also there. She's dealing with the climate change issues. But I think that the persons that are attending this webinar have a lot to say. Please, the floor is yours. I would like to see your hands. Just reiterating please raise your hand if you would like the floor. Participants as well as speakers, thank you. Thank you very much. Well, if I don't see any hands raised, perhaps we can give the floor to Naznin, you are here, and I'm sure that you have a lot to say. So sorry to put the finger on you, but as you're in the screen, perhaps you can give us your perspective. Thank you so much. Can you hear me okay? Great. Thank you so much and no problem for putting me on the spot. I just wanted to say again a huge thank you to the to the group. It has been a real pleasure to work on this project. Just to pick up a little bit on what Anders already sort of laid out in our policy paper. I think a few things that come to mind that are critical for us as we go forward in addition to what we've laid out is a very practical recommendations are not recommendations that are asking for the moon. They don't require very vast levels of effort. One as you know UNDP and UN Women had with the University of Pittsburgh pulled together some data on what kinds of measures are being put in place during the COVID response. And I think the challenge we found is that there are opportunities to do a whole lot without necessarily needing to change things very much. You know, we found that the quickest area that there was action on because of the intensity of the issue was on violence against women. But we also saw that there were measures around economic security that were not being addressed that could have been quite easily addressed around social protection around what needs to happen around women's economic security. I think one thing that tended to be the easiest I would think the lowest hanging fruit is the different task forces and how do you make sure that there's equal representation in those task forces. So, you know, the data told us that women only made up 24% of task force members and 18% of task force leaders. And as you know, it is not difficult to ensure that you have equal representation. So I think the kinds of things that are in our recommendations are very practical and don't require a whole lot of transformation and huge steps to to take place and that these measures are actually quite quite possible. I'll stop there I could continue but I'll stop there. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you very much. Yes, you're absolutely right. If we don't have equal representation we are never going to have equal say at the decision making tables. I believe that the paper on women and girls is very good in that regard because they are mentioning the, the high level meetings and the next agreements that are being discussed worldwide. So there, there must be a gender lens for all of these issues, and the gender lens are only going to be built by us by women. We have a great question from George, Florin, cycle. The question is, what is the volume of the financial support and the channels and tools needed to implement the report recommendations. As all the, the members that were participating at the different policy papers, you know your field so I would like to, to keep this question open for the next space for answers, because financing and budgeting and I mean that that's needed. So, how are you going to, to make that funding possible. And I received a message from Rapsa Kabachi. Rapsa, I'm not sure if technology is going to be on our side because I don't see your hand but please speak if you are able to. And if not send me a message. Rapsa, you're there. So, and then I will give the floor to Miriam. I think you're able to see me but I don't know, let me see if I have something wrong with my, I don't see you but I hear you. I have to, I have to do a different permission for camera. Hang on. Okay. You should see a little pop up here. All right, there we go. Same as well for Dr. where a while we get everyone connected. Perfect. Thank you. There we go. Okay, all right, I can see you. And I hope you can see me. Thank you so much for allowing me to speak. I wanted to express that it's been, it's been phenomenal work that has been done. I haven't been able to contribute as much as I wish I could, because of the busy schedule but I think looking at the outcome, the policy and practice of different nations on different, different levels will be very valuable for us policymakers and members of Parliament. So I think this is something maybe we can try to share and disseminate with other members of Parliament definitely I will share it with our members of Parliament in the Grand National Assembly of Turkey and also with other parliaments as well. So I was thinking, seeing that Gabriella who is the, who's the one of the other presidents of the Interparliamentary Union that's what I was thinking maybe we can share it at different parliamentary levels and other levels of government, which are relative areas with who are working in relative areas that have come in the outcomes of the report. So I just wanted to express that it's been a great honor being a member of the task force, and I hope that the work that has been done and all the effort will be will contribute to better good of the humanity. I just want to express my thanks. Thank you. Thank you so much, Rapsa. And actually, Osbe shared with us the link that includes all different policy papers and literally all our results. So please feel free to share it. This is very good knowledge, as you mentioned Rapsa, very good recommendations for all different stakeholders. So please help us to disseminate these amazing outcomes. Okay, one more thing. I'm sorry. I think one of the things that's valuable with the policy and practice recommendations is not long. They're also short. So I think I find that to be very valuable when we live in the social media age also when people don't want to read long detailed. It's like a summary and we call it in Turkish, we call it like, you know, small like medicine, you know, you just, you can just get it and then go. So I think that's another thing that is valuable as well. And there's a lot of effort. It's more difficult to put together something short when there's so much of information. So I think that is something that also needs to be commanded. Thank you again. Thank you so much Rapsa. Miriam, please. Thank you very much. The presentations have been very interesting and informative. So I am grateful to know about that. I think that in many of them, and in many of our countries, we still have the issue of the health infrastructure, the health infrastructure that does not cover most of the people makes it very difficult to actually respond in a situation like the COVID pandemic. So I would like to suggest that one of the recommendations we can make from this COVID commission is that we need to have a group or an identified group that assesses how the infrastructure in a number of countries, I can say in Africa at least, and see how they can be improved and what they need. I think that we need external support for that, even if it's a matter of identifying nationals, but preferably made from other countries to come to see, especially the health information system, the data collection and so on. I think that if we strengthen that, we would have strengthened a very strong point that is currently a weak point to make us able to respond more effectively to pandemics of any kind. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you so much, Miriam. Do we have more participants, as we see that the mechanism for raising hand is not the easiest one, or I would like to start giving the floor for some answers. I would like to start with Madam President. I'm sure that her experience is going to be very valuable to contribute to these answers. Madam President, you have the floor. Thank you, Gabriella. I'd really like to just make a few remarks while our other participants think of some questions they'd like to ask. I'd like to pick up on what George had emphasised in his intervention, that the conditions, if you like, the baseline differs very greatly between countries and between regions, and that when we make recommendations, the ones we have been aiming at are as universal as possible. And I think they remain valid for the largest possible number of people in the world, but there are specific specificities, regionally, for instance, if you have a military junta that is that is massacring a part of the population, then it's rather gratuitous to say they should be introducing a universal health care. That's the last of their concerns, they're busy killing people. In other parts of the world, for instance, child and infant mortality, by the way, when we heard that five million children across the world die before the age of five, we should, on the one hand, try and think of ways to reduce it further. But let us remember that it went from 20,000, sorry, from 20 million deaths, not that many years ago, I forget now the exact number, and then it went down to 15 and then to 10 and then to five. So just this curve, if you like, of past situations is an indicator of how effectively you can reduce by millions the number of lives lost, in this case of children. Mother and infant mortality in many countries used to be catastrophically high. I used to be part of a group about reproductive health, and we visited several countries and looked at their statistics. Rwanda used to be at the bad end, if you like, of the highest numbers in terms of mother and infant mortality, and then they introduced a series of steps, very rigorous steps of building maternity hospitals and centers for following pregnancies and so on, and dramatically reduced the child and mother mortality within a relatively short period of years, whereas in Malawi, the figures, that was about 10 years ago when I visited, the figures remained alarmingly high, and when we visited the facilities that had been meant to reduce infant and mother mortality, we could see that elementary things, like having supposed built a facility that had a cement roof over it, but they didn't have running water, they didn't have electricity, they didn't even have candles, where a woman having walked five kilometers from a closest village to supposedly give birth in the birth center, was told that unless she had five, I forget what the currency was in the country, if she could buy a candle herself, then it would have to be done in the dark, and her child was strangled by the umbilical cord, because it all happened in the dark. These are elementary, simple things that are elementary to eliminate with the proper planning and the proper investment, and buying a candle, believe me, is not a huge investment, it will not break the budget of anybody's country, it takes planning, determination and vision as to what needs to be done, so that I think that for anybody ready to continue this work, you see, and seeing that these recommendations actually get applied in practice, in my understanding it might be useful to break down the baseline from which groups of countries start, and the way the particular kinds of difficulties they have, for instance, many parts of Africa lack of access to clean water, which is one of the main contributors to child mortality, but generally to pathology generally. And in other parts of the world, it would be something else. So that is something that, if you like, there's two sides to this middle. One is the universal desiderata, the things that we must be working towards to get results, and then there are the specific barriers and the specific difficulties that some regions of countries have. And some of them, amazingly enough, can be eliminated with relatively little investment, but with fantastically visible positive results in a relatively short time. Thank you. Thank you, Madam President. I would say that the ideal program was to give now the floor to George for his closing remarks, but before that, I would like to give the floor to Ronald. He just sent a very interesting question by our group chat, but if you can help us to give visibility and voice to Ronald, I believe that his reflections are going to be very, very useful. It should be connected in a moment. Yes, now he's there. Ronald, welcome. I think now, now, now I'm online. I was a chat disabled and no audio and no, no camera so I was just listening in my, my comment that I made in the, in the Q&A was, was essentially to point out that at the present, at the present time. We have the international negotiating body, kind of its underway it's going to be another meeting coming up in a couple of days to sort of look at a pandemic treaty or a quarter whatever we want to call it. So I was just, it's a question about any has any thought been given to how some of the issues that came out of this task group might be used to inform some of the discussions at the INB. I was just, is there a channel through which some of these ideas are being communicated. And the reason I ask is that I'm just, I was mentioning kind of I guess Gabriel the thought is that I was mentioning that I'm presently trying to work my way through, and almost complete, work my way through the, the most recent iteration which is the zero concept note, which was released just when the last day or so. And that's going to be the fake, the basis of discussion on the December 5, seventh IMB meeting, and I'm going to be participating in some of the discussions are that you kind of the open negotiations around that. But there's a whole lot of issues that that arise from that in relationship to the kind of financing, the kind of support systems, the kind of health systems issues that really need to be, I guess, addressed. There's going to be any effective pandemic preparedness, the prevention or preparedness. This came up quite strongly in a report that was just released earlier this morning by the G to H to the the Geneva hub that was looking at financial justice and pandemic preparedness. And I'm going to link over on that to Gabriel I don't know whether it's possible for it to be more widely shared the reports now available, because that the tenor that all of that discussion was that if you if you take the pandemic, and you take the vulnerabilities that are in the pandemic outside of the context of broader political economies and financialized kind of discussions, then you might be able to have a really nice system for intervening in a more equitable way but without addressing all the determinants of what creates that equity or in the first place. So it's a question about whether this is this is something that that this particular committee or task group would like to sort of consider to contemplate in terms of of enter into intervening in some way or engaging in some way and being over. Thank you very much, Ronald. I just shared your link at our groups chat so it is available there. And now I would like to give the floor to George for his final remarks please. Gabriella, looking, looking back, looking at the papers and looking back. I'm sure it's fair to say that these papers, and our group has been the voice that says that look, responding to a pandemic. It's not just a health issue. It's not just an economic issue, but it's about lives, especially those who were vulnerable before the pandemic. The papers are clear. In, in terms of the groups that they looked at. And overall, our contribution has been clear in that regard. So I guess I guess my final word would be that in whatever forum and I'm sure we're not is going to be a voice in the important from that he referred to in one of us fears that we are involved in, we will continue to be that voice. And I'm sure that the papers will receive a lot of attention. But the work has just begun. And especially in those in those in those discussions that are preparing for the next pandemic. And that we will emphasize that it's not just a health issue, and that a multifaceted responses is needed. Currently, in terms of preparedness and multi multifaceted approach is needed that takes care of the needs of the vulnerable so I'll end there and thank everyone who has devoted a lot of time to, to the, to the excellent work. I believe that I was gay, you've been a star holding our hands. And, and to my coaches, President and Gabriella is been a real pleasure working with you, and I'm sure we will continue the journey. Thank you and thank you and thank you. Thank you, George. And, well, before giving the floor to also get for the official closing. I would like to share some information with you. And first to to answer one of the questions that we still have in our group chat, which is related to the possible link between the biodiversity loss and COVID outbreak. I would like to invite all of you to take a look to the Sustainable Development Solutionary Network website. There you're going to see not only what we have been working at this task force, but the other task forces were also very productive. And some of them were developing a lot of information on different aspects related to the pandemic so please take a look to everything that we have produced over these two years as a commission as members of the different task forces. And of course, I believe that in a very personal commitment that is reflected precisely right now with these policy papers. So I have to move a little bit my hat of co-chair of this amazing task force and speak as co-chair of the steering committee of UHC 2030, which is an international partnership working for universal health coverage by 2030. We are living very challenging times. And personally, I am not sure that we have learned the lessons. I think that inequality is there and it is still growing that poverty has been growing for the last years, that perhaps the different governments already have thought about the SDGs and the 2030 agenda. But we're going to have an amazing opportunity. Yes, it is going to be challenging, but at the same time it's going to be inspiring and I believe an opportunity to renew our commitment with all different health related aspects. At the same time, there's going to be a very intensive high level week at the United Nations. For the opening of the General Assembly, there's going to be the SDG summit, which of course includes health and I won't say I believe that without health, it is very unlikely that we are able to achieve other SDGs. But that's going to be one. Then we are going to have a high level meeting on universal health coverage, another high level meeting for tuberculosis, and another high level meeting for pandemic preparedness. Apparently, well, not apparently in reality, each one of these high level meetings is going to have the people responsible of delivering different materials from the very basic resolution and all the way to implement how countries, how governments are going to present what they have done, but also their new commitments on these different fields, SDGs, UAT, tuberculosis, and pandemic preparedness. That's the opportunity to make world leaders listen carefully and commit again with very clear objectives. I mean, we need better accountability and for accountability, we need communities and parliament and for implementation, we need, as you all mentioned for the policy papers, all levels of governments, a whole of society approach. I think that yes, we are going to have that amazing opportunity, but at the same time, we cannot lose it. We need to make governments allocate enough budget to make all these words translated into realities, into real health access for all the people in all different latitudes. So from my side, a great, a huge thank you to all of you. It has been an amazing experience. I think that we created a very plural, a very interesting and passionate task force, and it is shown in our outcomes. So my last request is that you all have your social media, you have amazing networks, you are related to parliamentarians, local governments, national and international actors, private sectors, civil society, community level. Please share what we have done. Please, let's move into implementation processes. Let's move to action. And thank you. Thank you so much to our wonderful team that made everything possible. Thank you so much, Osge, and please extend our gratitude to all the team. Thank you so much. And on behalf of Sustainable Development Solutions Network and the Center for Sustainable Development of Columbia University, I would like to thank our co-chairs and task force experts for their time and valuable contributions to the work of the Lancet COVID-19 Commission in the last two years. We are also thankful to all participants who were with us today. Thank you and have a pleasant day.