Monaco Women Forum 2020
Sciences, Health, Society: the global and transversal impact of COVID-19
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, this Monaco Women Forum (then called Women 4 Women Forum) was held in the form of a webinar. Watch it below.
The International Women For Women Forum took place on Monday June 22, 2020 through a webinar entitled "Science, health, society: the global and transversal impact of COVID-19".
Organized by the International Women for Women Forum, an organization of "women for women" conceived in the Principality of Monaco by the journalist Cinzia Sgambati-Colman, which promotes conferences and debates on current issues and which takes place every year in conjunction with the Monte-Carlo Woman of the Year Prize, an international prize dedicated to women under the High Patronage of HSH Prince Albert II of Monaco and the Honorary Presidency of HSH Princess Charlene of Monaco. It was created to celebrate women around the world who are doing extraordinary things in their daily lives through their professional or personal actions.
The event was produced with the support of Walgreens Boots Alliance, which has supported the Woman of the Year Award since its first edition in 2012 and actively collaborates in promoting the International Women's Forum for Women.
Welcome speech at the Forum by H.S.H. Prince Albert II of Monaco.
With the participation of:
H.E. Madame Evelyne Genta, Ambassador of Monaco to the United Kingdom and Kazakhstan
Ornella Barra, Co-Chief Operating Officer, Walgreens Boots Alliance
Ilaria Capua, Director of the One Health Center of Excellence at the University of Florida
Moderator Cinzia Sgambati-Colman, journalist and creator Women For Women Forum
Professor Ilaria Capua's intervention was removed from the video recording of the event after a period of two weeks, in accordance with the agreements.
Ilaria Capua Director of the One Health Center of Excellence at the University of Florida explained.
It is the virus that makes the virus, not the pandemic. If it had been for him it would have stayed in the forest, if it had entered a Chinese village 100 years ago it could have infected a few hundred people and then it would have died out. We caused the pandemic because we operate in a system that does not have the flexibility to deal with a health emergency like this.
I think one of the things we should do is reorganize the way we move. Before the shutdown, China exported 4 million people. Covid-19 has shown us that epidemics are no longer a problem of people but of systems. Current epidemics are accelerated by our circulation system. If it had arrived 100 years ago, there wouldn't even have been a conversation about it. It's a movement disease. We need to look at it from another point of view. We have - or rather, we had before confinement - communities of people who travel by plane all the time. This has an impact on the way we exist and also on the environment, which we must think about. I wonder about the future, because it is clear that the transport of
mass contributed significantly to the spread of infection. And it's also a problem in the food chain.
Pandemics are social fixers: they are charged with energy, even positive energy. You have to be able to harvest it, because it is not fair that disasters only bring negative energy. The planet is breathing, the air has been purified in many parts of the world, nature is there and it is telling us that perhaps we need to give it some space...
It is impossible today to predict whether there will be a second wave of Covid-19. What we can say is that, according to the studies known to date, the virus has not changed. We must therefore act with caution, knowing that a possible return of the pandemic can be combatted with much more appropriate instruments than what happened a few months ago.