New Delhi: Health Ministers from the WHO South-East Asia Region and experts will meet in Jaipur, India from September 6 to 9 to discuss key health issues in the Region.
The 29th Meeting of Health Ministers of the Region being held on 6 September is a forum for exchange of national experiences and strategies relating to the political, social and economic dimensions of health. This will be followed by the Sixty-fourth Session of the WHO Regional Committee for South-East Asia. The Regional Committee is a statutory body comprising the Member countries and meets once a year to review progress and regional implications of the World Health Assembly decisions.
Dr Samlee Plianbangchang, WHO Regional Director for South-East Asia, will be present at both meetings.
What: 29th Meeting of Ministers of Health of countries of South East Asia Region
Sixty-fourth Session of the WHO Regional Committee for South-East Asia Region
When: 6-9 September 2011
Where: Shiv Vilas Resort, Jaipur, India
Some of the key issues up for discussion at the WHO Regional Committee Session are:
Addressing malnutrition and micronutrient deficiencies:
Seventy per cent of the world’s malnourished children reside in the Member States of the WHO South-East Asia Region. Most of them suffer from anaemia, including deficiency of iron and vitamin A. While many children die due to severe malnutrition, a larger number of deaths occur among the less severely malnourished. The consequences of malnutrition are intergenerational, and besides health it can affect intellectual work capacity in adults.
The Region also increasingly witnesses cases of unhealthy diets, obesity and a higher risk of chronic noncommunicable diseases. Successful interventions to address nutrition and micronutrient deficiencies could prevent two thirds of child deaths. Countries need to bring together sectors like education, agriculture, fisheries, food processing, media and Members of Parliament to successfully meet nutrition challenges. WHO’s Regional Nutrition Strategy is designed to assist Member States follow a life-course approach while working with all sectors involved.
Routine immunization:
About 10 million children in the Region are either unimmunized or underimmunized and vulnerable to avoidable diseases such as diphtheria tetanus and pertussis. This coverage gap is due to inadequate access, resources, as well as poor management of immunization services. WHO has proposed a strategic framework to intensify routine immunization in South-East Asia. The goal is for Member States to reach 90% immunization coverage at the national level and at least 80% coverage in every district by 2013. Immunization is one of the most cost-effective means to save lives. Achieving the immunization goals will also help the Region achieve Millennium Development Goal 4, i.e. reducing childhood mortality. The Regional Committee will declare 2012 as the year of intensification of routine immunization.
Universal health coverage:
The WHO South-East Asia Region accounts for the highest out-of-pocket expenditure for health care, among all WHO Regions. This Region also has the lowest government expenditure for health as a percentage of total health expenditure.
Few countries in the Region are able to provide quality, equitable health care, at affordable costs, to all their populations. The challenges for achieving universal health coverage include high costs; the high and potentially impoverishing out-of-pocket spending on health care; a large and poor informal sector that is vulnerable to the high cost of health care; and a large, unregulated private sector which is used by most patients.
The WHO Regional Strategy for Universal Health Care (UHC) aims to achieve sustainable and effective Universal Health Care which provides equitable access to quality health care and improved risk protection from financial shocks for the poor. It targets the poor, vulnerable and marginalized populations and encompasses both public health and medical care. This would be done by strengthening the health system through the primary health care approach. The strategy for Universal Health Care urges countries to increase public spending on health. Universal health care is underpinned by a financing policy that prioritizes the needs of the poor and most needy populations, and finds ways to subsidize the costs of essential health care.
Strengthening the community-based health workforce in the context of revitalization of primary health care:
The changing demographic profile within countries of the Region means that as people live longer, the elderly population (above 65 years) increases steadily. The changing epidemiological profile of the Region also suggests that more people are likely to suffer and die from noncommunicable diseases. At the same time the Region confronts a high burden of communicable diseases and maternal and child mortality.
Health systems in the Region focus on providing medical care with little emphasis on health promotion and disease prevention through educating and empowering families. National health budgets are skewed towards expensive secondary and tertiary curative care at the expense of primary health care while citizens bear very high out-of-pocket expenditures for basic health care.
The most effective way to address these emerging health needs would be to strengthen the primary health care system to reach the community better. The community-based health workforce, including the community health workers (CHW) and volunteers, are the backbone of the community health system and can play an effective role in addressing these contemporary health issues. They are already a part of the formal health system and have undergone formal training for their current roles. By re-aligning their role and functioning, and by strengthening their capacity to deliver public health interventions, these CHWs could become key change agents promoting healthy behaviours and reducing health inequities. National health policies need to review and re-define the role of CHWs and to make them an integral part of the referral chain within the health system.
HIV/AIDS:
The WHO South-East Asia Region has the second highest burden of HIV in the world after sub- Saharan Africa, with an estimated 3.5 million people infected and 230 000 AIDS-related deaths. Unsafe sex and injecting drug use are the main drivers for the epidemic in the Region. An estimated 1.3 million women aged 15 and above currently live with HIV in the Region.
Low coverage of HIV prevention and treatment for pregnant women had led to a large number of babies acquiring HIV at birth, and had contributed to an increase of HIV among children from 89000 in 2001 to 130000 in 2009.
The key challenges for the countries in the Region are the high cost of antiretroviral drugs, limited health system capacity and continuing stigma about HIV/AIDS.
The Regional Health Sector Strategy on HIV, 2011-2015 targets these challenges with a broader, multisectoral response to achieve universal access to prevention, diagnosis, treatment and care to reduce the burden of HIV.