Affiliates from the region, such as the Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation (South Australia Branch), the Vanuatu Association of Public Service Employees and the PSI Young Workers Network have contributed to submissions that will be part of the WHO deliberations this week.

Through a submissions we highlight the importance of adequately funded public institutions, such as WHO, in ensuring policies and systems that deliver universal quality health services for all. We highlight the importance of strengthening the capabilities of public health facilities in order to ensure safe and affordable surgery for our communities. Further, our submission on ageing and health makes key points around the harms of privatised aged care and the value of unionised and public aged care facilities.

In our submission on climate change, we delineate the key components of a plan for a healthy recovery and call on WHO Western Pacific to incorporate a public goods approach in this area. In two occasions, we stress the central role of the voices of workers through their unions, in processes that impact them. We especially highlight the importance to involve representatives of young workers so that policies and regulations are adapted to the emerging issues faced by the new generations and the youth are included as a strong and integral part of framing global standards that will be Driving the vision For the Future.

With regard to vaccines we urge the WHO to operationalise the binding principles of access and benefit sharing and push back against vaccine nationalism. Further, we urge governments to suspend all forms of intellectual property protection including patents and trade secrets related to vaccines (link to vaccines video). We are pleased to see progress in this direction as India and South Africa have recently made a proposal to the World Trade Organisation (WTO) that calls for a suspension of the institution's intellectual property rules for Covid-19 related medical products.

This partly reflects our position that trade rules represent barriers to an effective response to the Covid-19 health emergency. In light of the experience in dealing with the Covid-19 pandemic, our submission on the future work of WHO in the region recommends a focus on the global structural barriers to managing public health crises and calls on the WHO to conduct health impact assessments of trade rules that are applied in our region.