Baku, April 1, AZERTAC

WHO Director-General Tedros Ghebreyesus has sent a sincere letter to President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev and other world leaders.

The WHO Director-General praises the policy pursued and steps taken by the President of Azerbaijan to limit the impact and scale of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Addressing the international community, Tedros Ghebreyesus asks to take a number of fundamental steps, including strengthening of coordination between state bodies, suspending public meetings, adapting state authorities to new conditions for conducting testing, isolation and quarantine, providing health facilities and workers at the forefront with appropriate resources, explaining to the population the severity of the disease, hand hygiene, explaining the cough etiquette and the importance of social distance, isolation of all suspects, providing economic assistance to those most affected by the pandemic, strengthening inter-state solidarity, prompt sharing of information with the WHO on cases of infection and control measures and others.

In this regard, it should be emphasized that the WHO proposals have been an integral part of measures taken under the leadership of President Ilham Aliyev so far. The fact that the steps proposed in the letter have been applied in Azerbaijan for a long time once again confirms that the fight against coronavirus runs in the right direction in the country. The policy pursued in Azerbaijan can serve as an example for a number of countries in this regard.

Azerbaijan reacted very quickly to the spread of infection. A Task Force was established under the Cabinet of Ministers, coordination between state bodies was established, the importance of measures such as social distance to protect the population from infection was explained in detail, land borders were closed, the number of flights was sharply reduced, schools, kindergartens, universities were closed, restrictions came into force, quarantine regime was applied. A large number of people who returned from abroad was quarantined.

More than 10 hospitals across the country are at the disposal of coronavirus patients.

By the Order of the head of state, AZN 1 billion was allocated to reduce the socio-economic consequences of COVID-19. Thus, the state once again proved that the citizen of Azerbaijan is at the center of its social policy. In the near future, assistance will be provided to employees of business entities mostly affected by the pandemic. Apart from that, a Fund to Support Fight Against Coronavirus was established. It should be emphasized that there was no problem for the state to fully finance this fund. By contributing to the fund, the people of Azerbaijan have had the opportunity to show solidarity with each other and their country in these difficult times, and this is a positive example too.

From the very first days, Azerbaijan has been cooperating with WHO in the fight against COVID-19, and invited experts from the organization to pay a visit to the country. The recommendations reflected in the mission's report are taken into consideration by the relevant government agencies. At the same time, demonstrating global solidarity, Azerbaijan provided voluntary financial assistance to the WHO in the global fight against coronavirus.