Your Excellency, Dr Lotay Tshering, Hon’ble Prime Minister of Bhutan; Your Excellency, Mr Anutin Charnvirakul, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Public Health, Thailand; Your Excellency, Mr Rui Augusto Gomes, Minister of Finance, Timor-Leste; Your Excellency, Mr Ahmed Naseem, Minister of Health, Maldives; Dr Vinod Paul, Member, NITI Aayog, India; Mr Gagan Thapa, Parliamentarian from Nepal; High-level dignitaries, technical experts, development partners, members of civil societies and colleagues,
Good morning and welcome to this International Universal Health Coverage (UHC) Day celebration. It is a pleasure to host you.
Today is a day to celebrate progress, to take stock of our journey, and to revisit and reflect on the many signposts on our way, from Bandung, Alma-Ata and Astana, to our Flagship Priorities, the 2019 UN Political Declaration, and next year’s UNGA high-level meeting.
It is a day to empower and engage people and communities, and to emphasize that to achieve ‘Health for All’ we must be ‘All for Health’ – the theme of this year’s Regional commemoration.
Because we know: No one person or policy maker can achieve UHC.
Rather, it requires dedicated, whole-of-government, whole-of-society action that is equity-focused, and which establishes quality, accessible, affordable and comprehensive primary health care (PHC), the strongest foundation to achieve UHC, health security and Health for All.
You are aware: This is the focus of the global PHC Operational Framework, as well as the South-East Asia Regional Strategy for PHC, launched at last year’s UHC Day celebration. The PHC approach has three major components:
First, better integrating health services, with an emphasis on PHC and essential public health functions;
Second, strengthening multisectoral policy and action;
And third, empowering people and communities.
It is also aligned with the Region’s resolution on enhancing social participation in support of PHC and UHC, adopted at the Seventy-fifth Session of the Regional Committee in September 2022.
The resolution calls on countries, partners and WHO to strengthen social participation, community engagement and empowerment for UHC, with a specific focus on establishing collaborative platforms for shared learning and strengthened national capacities.
Finally, it was a key point of discussion at the Region’s recently concluded workshop on strengthening PHC, at which it was a pleasure to launch our new Regional Forum for PHC-Oriented Health Systems.
I thank all who participated in the workshop and launch, which were highly successful, and will accelerate progress in this crucial area of work at this critical moment in time.
Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, in 2017, around 299 million people in the Region faced catastrophic health spending.
An estimated 117 million people in the Region were pushed or further pushed below the purchasing power parity poverty line of US$ 1.90 a day.
Though the Region increased its UHC service coverage index from 47 in 2010 to 61 in 2019, gaps and challenges have continued to negatively impact the health and well-being, lives and livelihoods of the vulnerable.
Need it be said: The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated those gaps and challenges and pushed tens of millions more people in the Region into extreme poverty.
It has intensified fiscal pressures at exactly the moment in which health and social support must be maintained and even increased, for a healthier, more rapid, equitable and resilient recovery, and to accelerate progress on each of the health-related Sustainable Development Goals, and on social and economic progress more generally.
Today, to accelerate ‘Health for All’ through ‘All for Health’, I highlight several priorities.
First, multisectoral action must be urgently promoted, and our health-in-all-policies approach rigorously adopted.
Good health and well-being begins not in hospitals and health care facilities, but in homes, schools, workplaces and neighbourhoods.
In all settings, decision-makers must be sensitized and empowered to protect, promote and support health and well-being, and to mitigate its social and economic determinants.
Second, social participation must be mainstreamed within health system governance and decision-making, ensuring that stakeholder views, experiences and needs are listened to and considered in decision-making processes.
For this, policy makers and providers must directly engage with the people they serve, including through spaces and mechanisms that are participatory and inclusive, that minimize power asymmetries, and are oriented towards those who are at-risk of or already being left behind.
Third, legal frameworks must be developed, implemented and enforced to assist populations to enjoy the Right to Health through UHC.
Evidence shows that well-designed legislation that protects and promotes population health increases social participation, and with it, accountability. It can also help ensure that whatever the fiscal outlook, health is allocated adequate, sustained and reliable public funds.
Which brings me to my fourth point: financing. The COVID-19 pandemic has shown that when health is at risk, everything is at risk: lives and livelihoods, trade and travel, individuals, families and communities.
But it has also shown that when health systems achieve strong coverage and quality, they are better positioned to prevent and respond to acute public health events, and therefore limit health, social and economic impacts.
This is why amid the ongoing COVID-19 response and recovery, WHO is advocating for all countries of the Region to not just sustain but increase public expenditure on health generally, and PHC specifically.
For this, among other evidence-based strategies, we are calling for increased taxation of unhealthy products such as tobacco, alcohol, highly processed food and sugar-sweetened beverages.
My final message is that UHC is as much about the journey as it is the destination.
It is a goal that must be progressively realized, not just in systems and structures, metrics and percentages, but in how people from all walks of life think about and engage with health and well-being and the environments that support it.
Let us agree: ‘Health for all’ through ‘All for Health’ is not merely a means to an end but rather an end in itself.
It is an outcome that must be cultivated daily, weekly, monthly and yearly, in all aspects of our work, and as a core component of our onward quest to build resilient health systems that are PHC-oriented, people-centred, inclusive and sustainable, leaving no one behind.
Together we can, together we must.
Thank you.