Excellency Prof. Dr. Dante Harbuwono, Vice Minister of Health, Indonesia
Distinguished representatives from our Member States
Senior advisors and experts
Partners, colleagues and friends
Good morning, and welcome to the Regional Workshop on Innovations for Quality Integrated Primary Health Care, organized by our South-East Asia Regional Forum for PHC-oriented Health Systems.
I would like to thank the Government of Indonesia for hosting this workshop; for allowing us to learn from Indonesia’s rich history and its current direction; and for placing National PHC Integration at the heart of Indonesia’s health system transformation.
Thanks to everyone present here, for actively enabling our Region-wide culture of shared learning, synergy and action. Our WHO SEARO Regional Roadmap for Results and Resilience places importance on collaborating, sharing knowledge and learning from one another - and I thank you for making this a reality. The “Positive Practice Case Stories” to be launched today shows the wealth of knowledge in our collective, and I am delighted we are showcasing it to the world.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
We stand at a historic moment in time.
A remarkable transformation is taking place across our countries in our Region: a transformation from focus on a few select diseases to that of the full human condition, across the life course.
Political commitments have prioritized a renewed vision of primary health care as the cornerstone of UHC - at the UN General Assembly, at the G20, and at last year’s Regional Committee. But we haven’t stopped there. These commitments have been accompanied with action across our countries.
However, as you know, delivering quality integrated primary health care, in the context of the diversity of 2 billion people, is not a simple task.
The twin challenges of quality and integration, raised at the 2nd Annual SEAR PHC Forum meeting, are of particular concern for us. Poor quality care is, today, a greater barrier to reducing mortality in low-and middle-income countries than insufficient access. The Lancet Commission on High Quality Health Systems estimates that as much as 60% of 8.6 million deaths from treatable conditions are due to poor quality care.
Integration, including care continuity, is another major challenge in our region, as the health systems try to provide seamless care across life course, and extending from care in the community to the highest levels of specialized care. The lack of integration of public health functions in primary health care was one of the key bottlenecks in prevention, preparedness and response to the Covid-19 pandemic. Importantly, integration through ensuring service continuity and people-centeredness is a key determinant of quality.
Your implementation-related experience, with focus on these two areas, is fundamental to advancing our vision of primary health care. Your experience will, undoubtedly, benefit others in our region and around the world. Similarly, I hope we use the experience of others to help us overcome operational bottlenecks that we may face.
I look forward to the next three days of this workshop.
Together, you will share and examine innovations towards quality integrated primary health care, distilling what has worked - and perhaps equally importantly, what may not have worked.
You will learn from the nationwide implementation of Indonesia’s National PHC Integration, as supported through the creation and operation of the National PHC Consortium.
And finally, you will identify practical opportunities for strengthening our collaboration, and translating innovations within and across countries.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
150 kilometers from us stands the city of Bandung, a city whose role in the modern movement for Primary Health Care stands tall. The historian Iris Borowy describes the 1937 Bandung Conference on Rural Hygiene as “the first major international event in public health in which Asian voices were heard and representatives of non-Western regions were allowed to speak for themselves and challenge the idea of one universal Western model for world health.”
Four decades later, reflecting on the conclusion of that Bandung Conference, the then WHO Director General Dr. Halfdan Mahler wrote in 1978 that the “similarity between principles underpinning Alma Atta and the conclusions reached in 1937 cannot be denied. Clearly ‘PHC' is not new. Why has it been necessary to resurrect ideas that were put forward decades ago?”
He emphasized that the development of PHC must, first and foremost, be a concern of communities - allowed to incorporate local values, conditions, and lifestyles.
(The article is, by the way, available in front of you, and is well worth our time to read.)
Ladies and Gentlemen,
We are fortunate to be present together at this moment to meaningfully advance a vision that was first elaborated almost a hundred years ago.
While challenges no doubt exist, the economic, social and technological resources available to us are more than anyone before us ever had.
Together with a strong learning agenda, we can innovate for quality Primary Health Care and meaningfully advance the vision of Health for All.
I once again thank the Government of Indonesia and wish you an engaging and enlightening workshop over the next three days.
Thank you.