Excellencies, Heads of State and Government
Honorable Ministers
Partners, Colleagues and Friends
A very good afternoon to you all and thank you for joining us today. I think all of us in this room today recognize the extreme importance of an equitable global response to anti-microbial resistance.
AMR is not distant, and not invisible anymore. It is here, and it is upon us.
Low-and-middle income countries
AMR unfortunately has an uneven distribution of impact – low- and middle-income countries are both particularly affected and at more risk.
This is coupled with the uneven capacity and preparedness of these very same countries to deal with this issue.
This unfortunately creates the perfect storm – a very worrying combination of high impact and low capacity.
I would like to remind us of all that low- and middle- income countries should not be forgotten or ignored.
Global actions must guarantee that developing countries are not excluded from the collective endeavors to address AMR, thereby generating benefits for them.
Collaboration across Agencies
As we know, AMR is borne out of complex and multi-layered relationships and across industry, agriculture, the environment, and industry and – of course - human and animal health.
Addressing this will, likewise, require cross-cutting multisectoral collaborations that influence and impact each of these drivers of resistance. This cannot be addressed by the global public health community by itself. Indeed, no one sector alone can tackle this.
The AMR Multi-Stakeholder Partnership Platform - established by the Quadripartite organizations of FAO, UNEP, WHO and WOAH - is a manifestation of the needed cross-sectoral One Health collaboration. Thank you to FAO for hosting the Coordinating Team of this Platform.
We’re all in this together, and we have to continue to coordinate and cooperate closely.
On that note, in the spirit of coordination and cooperation with the moderator, I will not take up any more time.
On behalf of WHO’s South-East Asia Regional Office, and on behalf of our fellow organizers, thank you for being here today.