Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh speaks at the UN High-Level Meeting on Pandemic Prevention, Preparedness, and Response in New York on September 20, 2023.

At the opening ceremony of the UN High-Level Meeting on Pandemic Prevention, Preparedness, and Response in New York on Wednesday, Mr. Chinh asked for priorities to promote timely and equal access to vaccines, treatment capacity, public awareness, technology transfer, vaccine and medicine production capacity, and effective financial support for developing and underdeveloped nations.  

He underscored the need to promote multilateralism, global solidarity, and universal efforts in epidemic prevention, and insisted on Vietnam’s support for making global health security a priority in the agenda so as to prevent, prepare for, and effectively respond to epidemics.

He underlined the importace of giving top priority to caring for and protecting people’s health and life in order to achieve sustainable development and leave no one behind.

The meeting approved by consensus a political declaration on pandemic prevention, preparedness, and response. It was decided to hold another UN high-level meeting on pandemic prevention, preparedness, and response in 2026 to review the declaration’s implementation.

This meeting was proposed by Vietnam and several other countries and was approved by the UN General Assembly last September to find effective solutions to national, regional, and global shortcomings in preparing for, preventing, detecting, and responding to health emergencies.

Vietnam proposed December 27 as an International Day of Epidemic Preparedness, which was approved by the UN General Assembly in 2020.

On the same day, Mr. Chinh bestowed on Aurélia Nguyen, Chief Program Officer of the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation, the Vietnamese State’s Friendship Order in recognition of her support for COVID-19 prevention.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Aurélia Nguyễn, who is Vietnamese-French, helped establish the COVID-19 Vaccine Global Access Mechanism (COVAX) which provided Vietnam more than 70 million free doses of coronavirus vaccine.