Good morning, good afternoon and good evening.

Tomorrow, we expect the government of Guinea to announce the end of its Ebola outbreak.

I would like to offer my congratulations to Guinea and the health workers who helped to contain the outbreak at very high personal risk.

Thank you also to our partners who provided financial and technical support.

As you know, Guinea was one of three countries that was affected by the devastating West African Ebola outbreak in 2014 and 2015.

Thanks to the lessons learned from that outbreak and new tools including vaccines, Guinea managed to contain the outbreak in just four months, and prevent it from spreading beyond its borders.

Nearly 11,000 people were vaccinated against Ebola.

But our work is far from over. We must continue to support survivors and monitor their health, without creating stigma.

Our teams are also finalizing a 90-day post-epidemic resilience plan to support local health authorities, health workers and communities.

This success shows how an outbreak can be brought under control with the combination of community engagement, effective public health measures and the equitable use of vaccines.

COVID-19 is a different disease that spreads more easily than Ebola, but the approach is the same.

And yet even after 18 months, the ineffective use of public health and social measures, increased social mixing and vaccine inequity continue to give COVID-19 an opportunity to mutate, spread and kill.

The global failure to share vaccines equitably is fuelling a two-track pandemic that is now taking its toll on some of the world’s poorest and most vulnerable people.

Every region has countries that are now facing a steep increase in cases and deaths.

Many countries in Latin America have rapidly increasing epidemics, and others have plateaued at a high level.

In Africa, cases have increased by 52% just in the past week, and deaths have increased by 32%.

And we expect things to only get worse.

Less than 1% of Africa’s population has been vaccinated.

Vaccines donated next year will be far too late for those who are dying today, or being infected today, or at risk today.

Our global targets are to vaccinate at least 10% of the population of every country by September, at least 40% by the end of the year, and 70% by the middle of next year.

These are the critical milestones we must reach together to end the pandemic.

More than half of all high- and upper-middle income countries and economies have now administered enough doses to fully vaccinate at least 20% of their populations. Just 3 out of 79 low- and lower-middle income countries have reached the same level.

We very much appreciate the vaccine donations announced by the G7 and others. And we thank those countries including the United States that have committed to sharing doses in June and July.

We urge others to follow suit. We need vaccines to be donated now to save lives.

WHO will continue to support countries to apply public health and social measures to keep people safe.

And we continue to support countries to ready their systems and plans to roll out vaccines once they get them.

But we do not control the global supply of vaccines. The countries and companies that do must play their part to produce more, and share more to achieve WHO’s global targets.

We continue to explore every avenue for increasing production of vaccines, especially in Africa, and we will have more to say about that on Monday.

And even as we continue to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic, our regular work continues, across the spectrum of health issues.

This week alone, we opened a new country office in Kuwait, published a new implementation guide on suicide prevention, and yesterday we launched the Global Evidence Review on Health and Migration.

Refugees and migrants are among the most vulnerable people in our world, and suffer from a range of physical and mental health problems.

And yet data on the health of refugees and migrants is scarce and needs to be improved to support the best policy decisions.

WHO’s new Global Evidence Review on Health and Migration will set evidence-informed norms and standards to address data gaps and support global guidance and strategies on improving the health of refugees and migrants.

It’s another way WHO is working to fulfil its mission to promote health, keep the world safe and serve the vulnerable.

Tarik, back to you.