These warnings were broadcast by Augusto Santos Silva at the closing session of the UNITE global health summit - a worldwide network that brings together former and current parliamentarians in the area of health from around a hundred countries and whose main driver in Portugal is the deputy Social Democrat Ricardo Batista Leite.

In the speech he gave in the Senate room of the Assembly of the Republic, the former Minister of State and Foreign Affairs defended above all the thesis that the Covid-19 pandemic taught us that "health is a global issue, because viruses and bacteria know no borders, do not have to present a passport, are not subject to police control and circulate freely".

"Therefore, this administration requires everyone's effort, it requires multilateralism, it requires international cooperation. The role of parliamentarians is unavoidable and irreplaceable", he considered.

From the perspective of the President of the Assembly of the Republic, the Covid-19 pandemic "taught that it is important to be prepared for the unexpected".

"Covid-19 was not the last that we will face in our lives and we have to prepare better for the next one, we don't know when it will come, in what form it will come, but we know that, if it comes, when it comes, it will come with this global dimension", he said, before reinforcing his warning: "We have to be prepared for what will arise when we least expect it and in the way we least anticipate it".

"To face pandemics, we need the best available knowledge, we need experts, public health doctors, infectiologists, epidemiologists, but also statisticians, mathematicians and specialists in the field of social behaviours", he said.

Augusto Santos Silva added that, before making a public health decision, it is also important to look at the economic and social effects of the measures, at the budgetary capacity and verify whether or not there is support from the institutions "and the indispensable political consensus for the measures succeed".


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