health of the world the economy they bought and c.h. and only united we can do our duties i want to stress the message that you and i have sent to the world that saving lives and protective life. ought to go hand in hand we cannot do one without the other and in that spirit we at the i.m.f. are concentrated on making sure that there is a strong response to the health crisis as well as protecting the straight strength of the economy my 2nd point is about emerging markets and developing economies they are hard hit and

they have very often less resources to protect themselves against this crisis help any konami crisis. we know that in many countries health systems are weak. we know that in fight in flight to safety a lot of capital has left the merging economies the developing quote nearly $90000000000.00 have flown out this is way more than during the global financial crisis. and some countries are highly dependent on commodity exports which prices collapsing there hit yet again it is paramount for us to place these countries and especially the weakest among in the center of our attention the

same way the virus hits vulnerable people with medical preconditions hardest the economic crisis hits vulnerable economies the hardest and that takes me to my 3rd point we ed the i.m.f. are mobilizing strongly working together with the world bank and other international financial institutions bringing the world together. to provide protection against this crisis we have one trillion dollars war chest and we are determined to use as much as necessary in that protecting the economy from the scurrying of this crisis. we are mobilizing emergency financing assistance to countries and i can tell you we have never seen ever such

a growing demand for emergency financing already over 90 kurd countries have been placed sink request to the i.m.f. for it and this emergency financing east to underpin the appeal that you and i are putting out any t's please priori thyself expenditures use money to pay doctors and nurses make sure of hospitals function that they are makeshift clinics where necessary and protect your economy the most vulnerable people 1st so they can hold on their workers because the highest risk we see is a wave of bankruptcies and layoffs that would make the recovery from this crisis harder 3rd to we in this line of financial support.

we have the big one trillion we have the emergency financing we are also taking strong action for the poorest of follower members by mobilizing grant fund funds to serve their duties to the i.m.f. so they don't have to use scarce resources today for that purpose and together with the president of the world bank we put out an appeal to official by law through creditors for the time the economy is standing still to have that service obligations also in stand still a moratorium on that service for either countries. let me finish by saying that this is in my lifetime humanity's darkest hour a big treath to the whole world any tree quiets from us to stand

tall be united and protect the most vulnerable afoul of fellow citizens on this planet thank you thank you pederast for having me thank you very much for. your give of what is very remarkable speech i think you took to terrorists we will no open the floor to questions i would ask a journalist to ask only one question and if it's possible to specify to whom this question goes so we will spark hers with the n.b.c. drawn from c n b c don't can you hear us. can you hear me yes please go ahead. ok thank you for taking my question i'm calling from quarantine in new york city my question is that the pay television rates in italy and and the united states

especially italy are significantly higher than in asia and it appears that that may be the case in the next few a leak in the us i've seen research reports on a certain hitters and i do propane affecting this disease is there anything in the diet the lifestyle a typical drug protocol that americans or europeans use that make the virus more severe. i can begin and maria can follow up certainly the experience in italy and a large number of patients were were questioned on their use for example of ace inhibitors and there was absolutely no association on the use of those is inhibitors. having disease or not for having severe disease more importantly so. obviously we need to gather more evidence but the evidence thus far would indicate

that the that. these anti hypertensive drugs that are used many people are on do not appear to have any impact on the severity of disease with regard to the reasons why we have different mortality in different countries a lot of it's mediated by 2 factors one the age profile in those communities populations that have older populations or a higher percentage of people in the older population it may not be that the overall case fatality is different it's just that case fatality is higher in that older age group equally the presence of underlying conditions in those individuals and the incidence of underlying conditions in those individuals can also lead to worse outcomes so you have a lot of issues that have to be factored in when you try to work out why one country's mortality rate is higher or lower than others be. and obviously as well and you know this has to be taken into account that systems that come under

huge pressure systems that are overloaded with fatigue doctors and nurses and with many many sick patients of one time clearly the outcomes for those patients can be worse and that's what we've been saying and many countries are trying to do we need to take the pressure off the health care system we need to reduce the tsunami of patients coming through the door to give doctors nurses and other carers the opportunity to save more lives we can on. we do that if we pressure the virus and put it under pressure reduce the incidence and get back to a situation where we can deal with this. virus within the health care system in effect of work. things like the other reason why it's challenging to compare mortality rates is because indeed it is a rate which you're calculating on any given day which means you are looking at the numbers of people who have died divided by the number of people who have been

reported in that country and so there are significant differences at is in terms of the activities that areas are doing to identify cases. based on the epidemiology based on the transmission scenario that they're in and in many situations where systems are overwhelmed they're focusing on severe cases and those are the cases that are being detected and you're missing mild cases or unrecognized cases that may be in the community and so that could lead to a higher number of mortality rate at the same time you have individuals who are still in hospital that are developing either progressing to more severe disease and some people who are who are experiencing severe disease will have advanced treatments they could be on ventilation they could be an echo and it will take some time for them to either recover or to die and so it is very difficult in misleading to be comparing mortality rates what we really need to be focusing on right now are

what is the age profile of people who are in i.c.u. . we've talked about this before we're seeing more and more individuals who are of the younger age group in their thirty's in their forty's in their fifty's who are in i.c.u. and who are dying overwhelmingly we do see a trend across countries that people who are older people who have underlying conditions will have more advanced disease so if the population that is affected have those characteristics then you have a higher risk of death. but and we have some time to go before we can really understand what mortality looks like across different countries so i would urge you to to to take those mortality rates with caution when comparing across countries thank you very much are there to run it on to but back over we will now go to sign whatever from today news africa so when can you hear us you know 2nd here you can you hear me yes please do please go ahead thank you for taking my question man in

the same when i think about from today news our faith and washington d.c. and my question goes to the managing director of the i.m.f. ms system you know. from lagos in nigeria to join his birth inside africa and even to kinshasa in the democratic republic of congo ivory guns who have been forced to stay home are complaining about honda many of them say their home government forces may kill them faster than even to get all nowhere else did only hatred use the least they may have in the world to ground their belief to developing countries including african countries to provide food to the u.s. it is it going to be spread a big girl never can you guarantee here today don't you the special attention poor african nation wanted in this pandemic. simply leave to african nation before he's delayed thank you. well i want to thank

very much for this question it is the continent we the i.m.f. worry a lot about there has been a momentum built in africa. africa has been growing and many countries have done really well in recent years and we are risking to lose this momentum and even worse to reverse it and therefore it is hugely important to provide substantial financial support to africa and we do eat in 2 ways one we are scaling up emergency financing and i can tell you a bed. yesterday our board approved emergency financing for rand and today 2 more african countries are going to be in discussion for approval

our objective is to double what normally is being provided as emergency financing and we do that in very highly concessional terms. with a big component of this financing being defacto ground component. we do so because we recognize that many governments are faced with this dilemma do they. provide support to people to simply survive do they fight the virus and we want this to be a follows the dilemma we want them to have for the next months substantial financial resources so they can step up their support for people against the pandemic and their support for the for the economy in many cases informal economy that requires social safety nets to be to be strengthened to

help people to we do see the issue of debt as one that has to be addressed urgently for us at the i.m.f. what the committee says that for our poorest members we are raising grant financing to cover their use to the i.m.f. it is called catastrophic containment relief trust and we have been getting support from the u.k. japan and others so we can do what you're saying provide that relief visit the our on obligations beyond that we're also calling on official. creditors to countries either countries many of the host countries in africa. to provide much needed space for countries to address their immediate

priorities by a standstill on that service to official creditors for a period of one year and i can tell you that i have been in touch with many of the leaders in africa i know how important it is right now to stand up and support africa built a bridge over what is such a dramatic drop in their economic performance. figures. listening to a briefing from the world health organization headed by dr ted was at an m he's hosting a panel there is also featured importantly christina drug aver who's the i.m.f. chief and she talked of this jewel crisis its health an economic in history we have

never witnessed the world economy come to a standstill she said that in her lifetime this was humanity's darkest hour saying the developing economies the hardest hit and we need to focus on those countries and also talked about a war chest which will come on to now with james bays who's been listening in our diplomatic editor diplomatic editor of course at the united nations and james what about this war chess a one trillion dollars has been a month thank you much question. well that's what she said is going to be needed to solve the problem and she is a very sober economist and stateswoman been in charge of the international monetary fund for only 5 months she took over from the french woman christine lagarde 5 months ago but she has a great deal of experience she's a bold garion who previously was a european commissioner now she is showing i think the enormity of this crisis remember that her organization the international monetary fund was set up along

with the world bank the so-called bretton woods organization set up the brushwood conference at the end of world war 2 to try and get the world's economy out of world war 2 well she's saying this is an even tougher task certainly much greater than the recession of 20082009 so she's i think showing the scale of the problem and in that last stance i think she's showing where she's most worried which is the developing economies of the world particularly in the end in our stance are focusing on africa a place she said economically that showed so much momentum in the last few years but momentum that could be seriously set back. what we're seeing from this virus what we see at these world health organization press conference is a daily update of the situation with coronavirus but regularly they have guests in from other parts of the world community to focus on the various impacts christina's

georgieva making it clear that in her view you have to deal with the lives saving the lives and saving the livelihoods simle tenuously right and to tenderize the chief talking of the knock on effect of this terrible crisis and and how it's affecting other diseases like polio. yeah well it clearly if you got all this medical attention focusing on the virus then all the other attention that would normally be there people who would normally go to a hospital in developing countries you say things like polio the efforts of the public information campaigns all of these are affected because of the the efforts going that's going on to deal with the virus and clearly what is most worrying and worrying here at the united nations we heard the u.n. secretary general antonio terrace couple of hours here at u.n. headquarters in new york remember the world health organization is part of the u.n.

they are worried that the most vulnerable communities of the world are the ones that probably don't travel the most and so it's actually been developing world with the most sophisticated medical systems that's been hit 1st but they're worried that the more vulnerable areas the developing world conflict zones and the like they may be down the line and that's why the u.n. is trying to mobilize a major effort to try and protect those communities are james thanks very much ed james bays of the united nations well let's just dip in again and listen to christina georgieva the i.m.f. chief who's speaking right now actually is going back to dr ted ross's net at the pentagon s.s. and in any way to that's a quote and so we will try don't pass yes to me me yes go ahead ok so can i ask your words what that you actually a stance on antibodies testing if you already approved some of them and is that a good practice we widely used for antibodies need for the lock out is actually

all were and of course the when you get past were also is that a good. idea that comes from germany is that is that feasible or can do such as the thank you. thank you for the testing there's there's a very large number of molecular tests and serologic tests that are now available for use some of which have gone through approvals in their in their countries regulatory approvals we are working with a number of countries right now that are looking at the use of sera logic assays in the form of research where they are looking to estimate the 0 prevalence or the antibody levels in populations in their countries there's a number of countries across europe and across asia that are currently doing this and they're looking at different types of tests they're looking at screening ass ace which are allies us but they're also looking at micro neutral micro

neutralization assays which are more confirmatory testing. we there's a large amount of work right now and we're working with find and we're working with other groups that are trying to evaluate these against a well characterized panel of sera from infected individuals and non infected individuals or controls and those that work is still under way what we would like to be able to do in the form of research is to be able to compare some of those serologic assays. with individuals who are known to have been infected so identified through molecular testing all of this work is underway but there are a number of tests that are available and this is very positive in terms of being 4 months into or early 4 months into a pandemic where they were rapidly developed because full genome sequences were shared very quickly by either by china.

just. the tests that are currently being used the. p.c.r. type tests that the test detect the virus and usually in the nose nasal cavities of individuals so if someone is symptomatic and they get tested you can you test for the virus the share logic tests don't test for the virus they test for the immune response to the virus and they say you've had a recent infection or maybe not so recent fiction and there are different parts of that test for i.g.m. which tells you if you had a very recent infection or stone fractures i.g.g. which says you've had an infection at some time in the past so we have to be careful in using these tests that they may diagnose you as having had the infection but they're not necessarily used in the act of diagnosis of an active case you can be sick and infected with the virus and you may not have yet developed a syria logic response to the virus so how these tests are used to be very carefully calibrated we welcome all the innovation and we need

a comprehensive set of testing tools but they need to be rolled out with the careful objectives of what they're actually supposed to achieve what we do welcome the innovation we welcome the private sector innovation and we welcome governments introducing these testing into their national policies in the appropriate way. thank you very much i will go now to our new our colleague based here in geneva from a.f.p. and yes can you hear us he has had a very good to hear you. i want you to have a question to us something that mary is going to go off said before she's she said if i understood when that's. more and more of that because that more and more young i don't even care if she can give us some figures about that and if she hasn't any explanation thank you. so thank you for that question yes indeed we

are seeing more and more younger individuals who are experiencing severe disease i should say overall most of the people who are experiencing severe disease and ice in ending up in i.c.u. and needing advanced care are people of older age and are people who have underlying conditions but what we are seeing in some countries is that there are individuals who are in their thirty's who are in their forty's who are in their fifty's who are in i.c.u. and who and who have died we've seen some data from italy we've seen some data from china we've seen some data from a number of countries across europe where people of younger age have died some of those individuals have had underlying conditions but some have not and so what we need to better understand is why there are young people who are dying from this infection. there are still many unknowns at the present time so i can't give you a complete answer on that but what is important is that people who are infected

with this even if they have a mild disease what is classified as a mild disease or a moderate disease moderate disease still includes pneumonia. and if you hear anyone who who has been infected who expects planes the kind of disease that they've had. this isn't this it's still pretty significant even if you don't require hospitalization but what we need to better understand and these will come through these natural history studies which are being conducted of why are some people progressing from moderate disease to severe disease to critical disease wires on. the paternal geneva the world health organization hosted by dr dr ted was out on them also featuring the i.m.f. chief who said that in her lifetime this was humanity's darkest hour and there is a crisis like no other and never had as they witnessed the world economy come to such a standstill more to come. struggle

is full of pleasure. but i've also been couto father on the subject told me last night it's interesting that i'm there also as a missile to the elephants running the system an intimate look at life in cuba from a clear laughed at me from media without a long time it dragged don't make it was a little like the last one of the year my cuba. on al-jazeera. before any official investigation into the tragedy of flight m.h.

70 was complete the website of one citizen journalist claims to have connected the dots only like density one of the bad was removed by the investigations team at spelling county has identified the 2nd suspect as citizen journalism investigations trust is generated through transparent don't believe me there's the. better track to truth and approach truth well coming soon on 00. the u.n. fact finders accused the bernese military of genocide this is a political if you think that. do you believe they're under modi is a fascist or poor kids don't have all gone they. would both recognise the both sides have legitimate grievances against the other climate this is the foundation of climate action and that is why the polluters must face. to face with up. on al-jazeera. what's most important to me is talking to people understanding what

they're going here and i just you know we believe everyone has a story worth hearing. this is in my lifetime humanity's darkest hour the international monetary fund says it will use as much of its trillion dollar war chest as necessary to fight the coronavirus and. this is live from doha with continuing comprehensive coverage of the coronavirus pandemic including. the u.n. renews its call for a global ceasefire to help calm.