Good morning Regional Directors and UN colleagues and welcome to this Regional Directors’ Summit, which precedes tomorrow’s inter-ministerial meeting on revitalizing health promoting schools in the South-East Asia Region.
The South-East Asia Region is home to more than 360 million adolescents aged between 10 and 19 years. In South Asia, a massive 36% of the population – some 627 million people – is under the age of 18.
Although adolescents are generally considered healthy, significant morbidity exists in this age group, much of it caused by physical inactivity, unhealthy eating, and inadequate access to and education on sexual and reproductive health.
Adolescence is a crucial period of life.
It is when life habits are formed, and when the foundations of life-long health and well-being are established.
Children and adolescents spend most of their productive years in school, and it is there that our efforts must be focused.
The health promoting school is a school that consistently strengthens its capacity as a safe and healthy setting for teaching, learning, and working.
It is a school in which collaboration between teachers, staff and parents is fostered, with the aim of building a health-enabling environment that promotes life-long health and well-being, not only in schools, but in the home and community.
In 2021, WHO, UNESCO and other partners issued global standards and implementation guidelines on how to build health promoting schools, highlighting a series of evidence-based tools that can be implemented at very little cost.
In our Region and across the world, the COVID-19 pandemic has severely disrupted education.
Prolonged school closures have led to enormous education loss and could have serious long-term impacts on the economic potential of young people, especially those from poor and marginalized backgrounds.
They have already had serious indirect impacts on health and nutrition, and on the well-being of adolescents, including from lack of access to school meals, social isolation and increased screen exposure.
But as schools increasingly reopen – and do so safely – we have before us a unique opportunity to accelerate implementation of the health promoting schools approach, achieving the interlinked objectives of health and well-being for all at all ages, and access for all to inclusive, equitable and quality education – Sustainable Development Goals 3 and 4, respectively.
I am pleased that a Technical Working Group on school health, nutrition and well-being, cochaired by WHO, UNICEF and UNESCO, has been established within the Asia-Pacific Learning and Education 2030+ Network.
Last month, the Regional Office for WHO South-East Asia held its annual Regional Committee meeting, at which a resolution was adopted on revitalizing school health programmes and health promoting schools.
Tomorrow, we will host an inter-ministerial meeting on achieving this outcome, bringing together the health and education sectors, and other stakeholders, to strengthen partnerships, enhance political commitment and develop pathways to build health promoting schools.
Participating ministers are prepared to issue a “Call to Action” to implement the Regional Committee resolution.
I thank the Technical Working Group of UN agencies for collaborating in support of the inter-ministerial meeting, and for other related activities.
Through your joint and harmonized efforts, you have shown that UN agencies have the capacity and commitment to support ministers of health and education, leveraging the high-level buy in they have established.
I once again welcome Regional Directors and UN colleagues to this summit and invite Regional Directors to make their opening remarks.