Thank you, Excellencies and D–G, Dr Tedros, for the important insights you have shared.
You have deliberated in-depth on a range of critical issues, each of them essential to the focus of this Ministerial Roundtable.
In my earlier remarks, I commended countries on their efforts to maintain and strengthen essential health services throughout the COVID-19 response, with a focus on primary health care (PHC).
Amid ongoing waves of infection, such efforts must continue to be prioritized – a point you have rightly emphasized, and one that is critical as some countries of the world attempt to return to normal.
WHO will continue to support you in this endeavour, building on last year’s Declaration on the Collective Response to COVID-19, and our continued commitment to advance health equity, build health system resilience, and achieve universal health coverage (UHC) and the health-related Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Let us pause for a moment and look at what you have said has worked.
Increasing community engagement and communication to enhance uptake of essential health services has worked.
Reorganizing and shifting an array of health services from higher to lower levels of care has worked.
Recruiting additional health workers, especially at the community-level, and enhancing the capacity of existing health cadres has worked.
Expanding telemedicine and increasing access to other e-health and m-health technologies has worked.
Dispensing medicines via innovative methods such as door-step delivery and extended prescriptions has worked.
You have shared what is needed. And looking ahead, from our Regional perspective, you have sketched out what is required to strengthen capacities to prevent, prepare for, respond and recover from COVID-19 and other health emergencies, and to accelerate progress towards UHC and the health-related SDGs.
In other words, towards a fairer, healthier more health-secure future for all.
On that basis, I emphasize six priorities.
First, mobilizing political leadership and accountability across sectors, with full recognition of the need for a health-in-all policies approach that addresses social, economic and environmental determinants of health, and which empowers communities.
Governance of the health sector in particular must be strengthened, including through greater oversight and engagement with the private sector and civil society organizations.
Second, increasing public investments in health that are allocated towards strengthened PHC services, enhanced human resources for health, and increased access to essential medical products.
Since 2019, WHO has advocated that all countries globally increase spending on PHC by at least 1% of GDP.
Third, strengthening core health system elements, including service delivery and health information systems. Such systems must be disaggregated along equity stratifiers, with the aim of better understanding who is missing out and why and taking remedial action.
Fourth, better integrating health emergency and disaster risk management strategies, as well as public health emergency preparedness and response capacities, with PHC services.
To be effective, an emergency response must be embedded within existing local health structures, catering to affected communities, reducing response time, empowering local networks, and responding to on-the-ground needs as and when they arise.
Fifth, leveraging the potential of traditional systems of medicine. We must draw on our past in a way that is safe, effective and well regulated. We must embrace our future in a way that is appropriate and sustainable, and which integrates technologies into existing systems.
Sixth, strengthening partnerships. COVID-19 has shown that robust and reliable bilateral, multilateral and public–private partnerships are critical to emergency response and to maintaining essential health services.
Such partnerships must continue to be strengthened, not only to anticipate and respond to emerging needs, but to support an overall vision which is aligned with our long-term targets and goals – our Flagship Priorities and the SDGs.
The challenge now is to put these priorities into action, for which adequate, predictable and sustainable financing must be secured.
The economic case is clear.
In ordinary times, for every dollar spent on PHC-oriented health systems, the return on investment averages nine to one. In low- and middle-income countries, that return can more than double, and will also accelerate progress on other SDG targets, such as poverty reduction, decent employment and gender equality.
The depth and scale of the COVID-19 crisis has increased the return on investing in PHC-oriented health systems many times over. Consider that in September 2020, the Global Preparedness Monitoring Board estimated that it would take the world 500 years to spend as much on investing in preparedness as it was losing due to COVID-19.
In addition to ongoing waves of COVID-19 infection, we continue to face a range of pressing threats, from influenza and antimicrobial resistance, to dengue, and an array of natural hazards, including climate-related weather events.
In 2021 alone, India, Indonesia and Timor-Leste have responded to floods. Indonesia and Nepal have responded to earthquakes.
There is not a moment to lose. The case is ours to make, and the future ours to define.
I thank Member States and partners for their ongoing and unwavering support, and I reiterate WHO’s steadfast support at all levels, local, regional and global.
I am certain that together we can leverage this historic opportunity and build back better essential health services, for a fairer, healthier and more health-secure future for all, leaving no one behind.
Thank you.