give us a sense of how much money is needed
to address health needs and how that compares with other
conflict areas. Scarlett, thanks for having me.
The World Health Organization is deploying emergency medical teams and
essential medicines inside Ukraine. As you've been covering 10
million people have been displaced. Most of those people
are actually inside the country, they are internally displaced
and the W. H. O. Is raising
57 a half million dollars to provide them healthcare immediately
. But unfortunately only one third of that has been
raised so far, one third of that has been
raised so far. Can you give us a breakdown
of where that money is coming from, whether it's
through for profit companies, family foundations, wealthy individuals
. We just talked about Mackenzie scott's donation too.
Headstrong for instance. So the third that's been donated
to the W. H. O. Is largely
coming from governments. But as you've been covering philanthropists
and businesses have a lot of power in this moment
of crisis. Of course, they're aligning their businesses
and investments with their values in response to the crisis
, but they're also giving a lot of has been
given to the refugee crisis to the organizations that are
across the border providing support to the families that are
crossing and leaving Ukraine. There aren't as many philanthropists
who have been supporting the work inside Ukraine. So
we're very much appealing on behalf of the W.
H. O to those philanthropists and businesses to support
the delivery of healthcare inside the country and of course
, the best way to get those companies to open
up their wallets is to break down and give them
a detailed accounting of how their money will be spent
. Can you give us a sense of what portion
of the funding that does come in and spent on
administrative overhead versus going to the actual facilities? So
in a moment like this, in a crisis like
this, very little of the funds go to overhead
or administration. This is all about supplies and people
. So the majority of the funds that are being
raised for the W. H. O. Go
to essential medicines, oxygen, insulin, surgical supplies
, generators to keep the power on defibrillators, rehydration
salts. I mean, these are the basics of
providing medical care. Just to give your viewers some
understanding for those people who are inside Ukraine. Half
of them are saying they don't know that they're going
to be able to find enough food to eat.
Half of the pharmacies in the country are no longer
functional. Some of the hospitals, including one of
the hospitals and marry Paul, only one in 10
of the staff are showing up. So we need
to make sure that we're delivering people and supplies.
That's what the funds are for to ensure that people
have access to healthcare in the middle of this conflict
. Thank you for giving us that breakdown. I
think it's really important to understand the details there.
You mentioned Mario paul, we know that the Russians
attacked a hospital complex? There, There was a
maternity ward that was attacked as well. Can you
give us a sense of the the attacks on the
healthcare facilities, not just in that devastated city,
but across the country at this point, it's been
very sobering. The W. H. O.
Has a mandate on behalf of the United Nations to
document attacks on health care workers and facilities so far
, We've documented 70 70 in the first month.
And that means people don't have access to places that
they would consider safe for women to deliver their Children
for people to seek Surgery for people to seek response
to trauma care. So that 70 attacks in the
last month across the country and every attack on a
health care facility or a health care worker is a
violation of international humanitarian law. So we are absolutely
trying to make clear that those attacks must stop.
So people can have access to basic care. You
mentioned that only a third of the$57.5 million dollars
that the organization is seeking has been donated so far
. Why do you think there is a perhaps not
reluctance, but why do you think there's less understanding
of why healthcare facilities need this kind of funding,
Is it because there aren't individuals associated with it?
It's given to institutions, to organizations to infrastructure?
Well, I think there's an understandable desire for people
to support those refugees who are across the border.
Um, that's the images that we're often seeing of
people who have lost their home. Um, and
who are desperate for support and that's where your heart
goes. And that's understandable and that's laudable. I
think what's less understood is that in a conflict like
this, the majority of the people who are affected
are still inside the country and also need help.
So of course, we want to provide support to
refugees. Of course we want the conflict to end
. But in the meantime, we need to make
sure that people have access to medical care. And
unfortunately, healthcare is often not at the top of
the list. I'm going to ask an uncomfortable question
, which is that in the early days of Covid
there was some concern that perhaps the W. H
. O. Was perhaps too sensitive to china's need
to not be seen as hiding the scale of the
coronavirus infection. How do you reassure potential donors,
both individuals and companies that politics are not guiding any
of the decision making in terms of distributing the funds
? Well, you just said it yourself, politics
do not guide the W. H. O.
W. H. O. Is guided by the
science and it has been working tirelessly over the last
two years to try to end the pandemic and coordinate
the international response. The W. H. O
. Has been subject to a number of external reviews
in these past two years so that we can learn
what went wrong, what we can do better for
the next pandemic, How we more effectively respond to
this one and the consistent finding from those reviews is
that we need to empower the World Health Organization.
We need to give them more authority over countries whether
it's china or the United States or any other member
state to respond in moments of health crisis. Also
, the World Health Organization has historically had an emergencies
team. It's an entire division of people who when
there's a crisis like in Ukraine they get on a
plane, they go immediately into the crossfire to help
people in need. So the W. H.
O. Has that incredibly important normative troll, guided
by science. It also has an emergencies team that
has historically been the ones on the front line of
the outbreaks and health care crisis like this one in 00:05:57.089 --> Ukraine.