Honourable Minister Kwabena Mintah Akandoh,
Honourable Minister Jan Christian Vestre,
Honourable Minister Nina Warken,
Honourable Ministers, Excellencies, dear colleagues and friends,
I thank France, Germany, Ghana, Norway and Thailand for organizing this important discussion.
This is an extremely challenging time for global health and development.
But it is also a moment for bold reforms to take us into a more sustainable future.
The sudden reductions in official development assistance have had severe impacts on the health of people and communities in dozens of countries, particularly lower-income ones.
We are seeing people missing life-saving treatment; forced into catastrophic health spending; the closure of health facilities; health worker job cuts; and disruptions to critical supply chains.
WHO is supporting these countries to sustain vital health services on which millions of people rely.
At the same time, many countries see this as an opportunity to accelerate the transition away from aid dependency to greater self-reliance.
This means investing domestic resources in health, in science, and the health workforce to strengthen health systems and build resilience.
So, what's happening now is a drastic shift, but it is needed.
At a time when multilateralism and global health are under threat, we need to remind ourselves of the fundamentals.
As stated in the 1948 WHO constitution, “Governments have a responsibility for the health of their peoples”.
I think there are times when the way that development assistance has been provided has made it harder for governments to exercise that responsibility.
In line with the principles of the Lusaka agenda, support from all of us in the global health community needs to be aligned with national priorities.
For example, we have set out as part of our reform process that we will reduce the amount of guidance we produce, while improving its quality and utility at the country level.
With the changes I announced last week in the leadership structure of WHO, we are aiming for a more focused and integrated approach across disease programmes and health systems.
We need to reduce costs to fill our funding gap for this year and the coming two years.
This does not come easy. We are consolidating, relocating, and scaling-back and stopping some programmes, and most painfully, cutting staff.
These cuts mean that WHO is losing experienced, dedicated members of our workforce.
Other global health agencies – and across the UN and international development – face similar challenges.
I recently convened the heads of 12 of our sister agencies and global health initiatives, to discuss how we can better coordinate our key priorities and countries to support.
And just two weeks ago I met with the UN Secretary-General and other agency heads to discuss how to adapt our multilateral institutions to new realities through the UN80 initiative.
I am pleased that during this time of crisis this Health Assembly is demonstrating that multilateralism is alive and well. We are on the cusp of approving the Pandemic Agreement.
We are seeing strong support for the sustainable financing of WHO through increases in Assessed Contributions, and pledges to the Investment Round.
We can and will weather this crisis and emerge even more fit-for-purpose, by staying focused on what really matters: improving health outcomes in countries.
I thank you.