The World Health Organization hosted the SIDS Summit for Health: For a healthy and resilient future in Small Island Developing States as a virtual event on 28-29 June 2021.
The Summit was planned at a time when Small Island Developing States (SIDS) face unprecedented health challenges. These include:
- the impacts of climate change including natural disaster;
- the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and its severe economic and social repercussion;
- high prevalence of noncommunicable diseases with economic and social determinants.
Geographical remoteness, small economies and high unit costs hamper the rapid response to emergencies, and provision of primary health care and referrals. And with high dependence on international relationships, for example, being primarily net food-importing countries, residents of SIDS are vulnerable to malnutrition and food insecurity.
In keeping with the 2014 Samoa Pathway, the Summit aimed to:
- support and promote the voices of SIDS leaders and communities on these global health threats;
- advance their health strategies and partnerships;
- galvanize support for innovations and solutions to speed up progress towards universal health coverage, health security and healthier populations.
The Summit was part of WHO strategic actions to apply a “SIDS lens” across its programme of work to fulfill commitments made in regional and global SIDS initiatives, and to strengthen technical capacity, resilient facilities, health workforces, supply platforms, and evidence generation and use.
Major expected outcomes of the Summit included mobilization of targeted financing and partnerships and a joint statement of priority short-term actions. These include steps to advance ongoing health initiatives, and to help drive results at the UN Food Systems Summit in September 2021, the 26th Climate Change Conference in November 2021, the Nutrition for Growth Summits in December 2021 and in 2022 and 2023.
The Summit engaged heads of state and government, ministers of health from the WHO SIDS Member States, as well as representatives of key regional and sub regional bodies; partner governments and agencies; civil society; youth; public-private partnerships and academia.
Panel sessions were scheduled to accommodate the diverse time zones of the Member States. The Summit was live-streamed and recorded with interpretation in all 6 WHO official languages.
WHO organized Member State sessions in preparation for the Summit. Several virtual webinars/discussions were held online, including with civil society and youth.
For more information on the SIDS Summit for Health and WHO’s strategic support to Small Island Developing States, please contact Diana Weil, weild@who.int and SIDS@who.int.
Recordings of SIDS Summit for Health
Recordings of the SIDS Summit for Health are available on the WHO website, as well as on WHO's social media channels.
Watch the recordings of the summit here.
Read the summit's outcome statement here.
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Provisional Agenda - SIDS Summit for Health
SIDS Health Policy Briefs: Climate change | Nutrition | NCDs | UHC & PHC | COVID-19 | Health Systems