Mr. Hassan and his fellow Youth Councillors advise and actively interact with the WHO Director-Common and the company’s senior management, designing and increasing the company’s programmes and techniques.
In an interview with UN Information forward of the 2025 World Well being Meeting – the UN’s highest discussion board for world well being – Mr. Hassan, who was born and raised in Texas, USA, explains why he began iCure, a world non-profit organisation designed to make sure that all individuals obtain entry to preventative medical screening, and the way the pandemic treaty might radically enhance look after susceptible communities.
This interview has been edited for readability and brevity.
Rehman Hassan: 10 years in the past, my grandfather handed away from coronary heart illness. I noticed how he was handled in a different way due to the best way that he offered himself, as an immigrant and an individual of color. He was very educated, however he had restricted literacy, and he wasn’t essentially informed what all his choices had been. I felt that the docs tried to hurry him into surgical procedure and that they pressured him to be anaesthetized as a result of they believed he was transferring round an excessive amount of, when actually he was simply in ache and uncomfortable.
I’m satisfied that he didn’t get the care that he deserved and that basically resonated with me, as a result of I needed to ensure that nobody else felt that means. I noticed that, as a teen, my function might contain working at a neighborhood degree, mobilising different younger individuals to advertise issues like good weight loss plan or train, and advocate for many who need assistance.
That’s how iCure began, and it has blossomed into a global motion. We now have hosted a youth fellowship programme with round 65 younger individuals from everywhere in the world, from Vietnam to Qatar to Puerto Rico, discussing the well being points they’re seeing and easy methods to tackle them, as trusted members of their communities, to bridge the sorts of data gaps which can be quite common in lots of marginalized communities, particularly amongst low revenue individuals and immigrants.
UN Information: Inform me about your private expertise throughout the COVID-19 pandemic?
Rehman Hassan: The pandemic was, for many individuals internationally, a deeply troublesome, scary, intense course of. I used to be residing with my grandparents who had been immunocompromised, and I knew that they had been at vital danger. While we had a variety of vaccines within the US, there was a variety of pandemic disinformation and misinformation; presenting it as one thing that had a low mortality price and that we might ignore.
As well as, we had a significant winter storm in Texas that froze the state for nearly two weeks. We didn’t have entry to electrical energy, fuel or water. Our home was flooded and in the end was destroyed. This mix of the local weather disaster and the pandemic meant that many individuals, particularly in my neighborhood, had been left behind and didn’t obtain the assets that they wanted.
© UNICEF
Kids in Mexico obtained meals baskets throughout the COVID-19 pandemic (file, 2022)
UN Information: The WHO says that the pandemic preparedness treaty, if and when it’s adopted, might be a breakthrough for well being fairness and make an actual distinction on the bottom. Do you agree?
Rehman Hassan: I positively suppose it’s a sport changer. I obtained concerned with the treaty course of by the WHO Youth Council, the place I symbolize an organisation [ACT4FOOD, a global youth-led movement to transform food systems] that primarily focuses on entry to meals, the social determinants of well being and the way we will promote change on the neighborhood degree.
The textual content of the treaty spells out the efforts that should be taken at a neighborhood degree, and every member state has an obligation to ensure that probably the most susceptible get entry to assist or care, as a part of their pandemic response plans.
There’s a dedication to early detection: if we will detect pandemics early, then we will be certain that everybody has entry to the care and assets they want.
UN Information: It’s probably that there might be one other pandemic in our lifetimes. Will we handle it higher than the final one?
Rehman Hassan: We’re positively seeing an acceleration of pandemics and excessive occasions that in the end undermine fairness.
I feel that the World Well being Meeting and the Intergovernmental Negotiating Physique for the pandemic treaty have accomplished an unbelievable job of understanding what went mistaken throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, and former pandemics, after which taking a look at how we will craft an instrument that can tackle these inequities or forestall them from occurring within the first place.
If member states ship a significant treaty, I feel it will considerably enhance and facilitate a a lot better pandemic response than what we noticed throughout final time.
