Excellencies, distinguished delegates, partners, colleagues and friends
Thank you to all of you for your active participation, insightful contributions, and your commitment to accelerating progress on SDG 3 in the Asia-Pacific region.
Over the past few hours, you have engaged in meaningful dialogue, examined critical challenges, and explored actionable strategies. You are helping ensure that health remains at the heart of sustainable development, and I thank you for that.
We have acknowledged the significant progress made, particularly in reducing maternal and neonatal mortality, while also recognizing the urgent need to address persistent gaps in financial protection, non-communicable diseases, and health inequities.
Our challenges have been magnified by the COVID-19 pandemic, climate change, and socio-economic disparities. It is clear that we need a multisectoral, resilient, and equity-focused approach to overcomes these obstacles.
A Strategic Way Forward: The Regional Roadmap for Results and Resilience
Under my leadership, the WHO South-East Asia Regional Office has developed the Regional Roadmap for Results and Resilience. This is a strategic framework to enhance capacity, accountability, and collaboration for a healthier region. This roadmap reinforces WHO’s commitment to supporting governments and partners in addressing key public health priorities at the subnational, national, and regional levels. Through this framework, we will prioritize initiatives that:
Drive results – Ensuring measurable and impactful health outcomes.
Foster collaboration – Strengthening partnerships across sectors.
Promote resilience – Building health systems that withstand shocks and crises.
Enhance well-being – Improving the quality of life for all people in the region.
The Roadmap is built on five pillars that will be the focus of my term:
Reinforcing mental health, well-being, and quality of life, ensuring a holistic approach.
Reaffirming investment in women, girls, adolescents, and vulnerable populations to promote equity.
Realizing access to technology and innovation, making health solutions more efficient and scalable.
Raising capacity and strengthening knowledge management to sustain progress.
Refining WHO’s leadership and performance, ensuring that we remain a driving force for health impact.
Our WHO South-East Asia Regional Office will translate the commitments of these five pillars into tangible action—working closely with Member States and partners to ensure that no one is left behind.
Key Imperatives for SDG 3
We only have five years left till 2030, and clearly our current trajectory is not sufficient to achieve SDG 3.
We have to intensely focus on three key accelerators:
Sustainable Public Health Financing. Governments must prioritize health investments, expand benefit packages, and ensure financial protection to prevent catastrophic and impoverishing out-of-pocket expenditures.
Comprehensive Primary Health Care (PHC) for Resilient Systems. Integrating NCD services into PHC is critical for prevention, early diagnosis, and treatment of conditions like diabetes, hypertension, and cancer—ensuring that people receive care when and where they need it most.
Harnessing Digital Health & AI for Equitable Access. Most countries in the region have developed National Digital Health Blueprints. Now, resources and capacity-building efforts must focus on effective implementation to enhance service delivery and system efficiency.
Urgency, Collaboration, and Bold Action
Our discussions today have reinforced that achieving SDG 3 is not just a policy ambition—it is a moral, social, and economic imperative. Health must remain central to sustainable development, and our efforts must be bold, coordinated, and forward-thinking.
I urge countries to develop and implement context-specific, evidence-based national action plans for SDG 3. These plans should be monitored at the highest level, to ensure accountability and adapted to operational challenges and opportunities for real-time course correction.
The path ahead requires urgency, innovation, and solidarity, and I am confident that together, we will drive meaningful change and deliver on our shared vision of health for all, by all, and with all.
Thank you.