Hon’ble Chair, Vice Chair, Excellencies, Director-General, distinguished delegates, ladies and gentlemen,
We have come to the close of this Seventy-third Session of the WHO Regional Committee for South-East Asia.
I thank our hosts, Thailand, for their commitment and effort to make it a success.
I thank Your Excellencies for your keen engagement and participation, and for your useful comments and suggestions on my presentation of the 2019 Annual Report.
The Report captures the progress we made in 2019 and also reflects on the unprecedented challenges that COVID-19 provides all countries.
We must continue to vigorously implement the Region’s “Sustain. Accelerate. Innovate” vision as together we strive to protect and defend the many gains we have made across all areas of health.
I thank the Chair of RC73, His Excellency, Anutin Charnvirakul, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Health, Royal Thai Government, for reinforcing our message and commitment to scaling up emergency preparedness and response and accelerating progress towards universal health coverage (UHC).
His Excellency’s comments on the need to focus on building stronger and more resilient health systems to be better prepared for future pandemics were well received.
I thank the Director-General for joining the Ministerial Roundtable, and for his commitment to this Region and the subject of our discussions – maintaining essential health services throughout the pandemic.
I am happy that His Excellency, Dr Myint Htwe, Minister of Health and Sports, Myanmar, appreciated WHO’s support.
Providing tailored support to Member States has always been the focus of WHO’s work in the Region, be it through prioritizing Member State concerns in the Flagship Priority Programmes or being perhaps the only region that provides maximum resources at the country level.
For example, in the last biennium, the Regional Office distributed 86% of its total resources to countries. In addition, what the Regional Office implemented was largely implemented at country level. Further, 93% of the funds we have received for COVID-19 have again been distributed to countries.
I would also like to address the suggestion of Her Excellency, Mrs Pavithra Wanniarachchi, Minister of Health from Sri Lanka, with regard to strengthening the safety of international travel, and inform Hon’ble Ministers that WHO recently released guidance on “Public health considerations while resuming international travel,” which countries can apply to resume safe travel as their economies open up.
Excellencies,
The Ministerial Roundtable was an immense success and will strengthen the Region’s collective response to COVID-19.
Solidarity and cooperation have been central to the Region’s ethos for many years now, and a feature of its pandemic response.
The Declaration on the Collective Response to COVID-19 affirms the Region’s resolve to strengthen the response and build a healthier, more health-secure Region as we move into the recovery and beyond.
By pursuing UHC with a focus on primary care services; by scaling up emergency risk management to achieve full IHR compliance; and by strengthening investments in health in the weeks, months and years to come, together we can achieve our many objectives and continue the Region’s winning trajectory.
I thank all of you for your appreciative comments on our work together in both yesterday and today’s sessions. They will be appropriately reflected in the RC Report.
In recognizing the success of this Regional Committee, I express my sincere gratitude to His Excellency, Anutin Charnvirakul, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Health, Royal Thai Government, for the effort he and his team put into hosting it.
I thank the Vice Chair, His Excellency, Mr Bhanu Bhakta Dhakal, Hon’ble Minister of Health and Population, Government of the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal, for his continued support.
I thank the Director-General, WHO and the HQ team for the energy and insight they brought to the Committee, and for their ongoing support not only to the Region’s response, but across all programmatic areas.
I thank the many non-government and inter-governmental organizations that participated and who continue to partner with us. The challenges we face cannot be solved by Member States and WHO alone, but require whole-of-society buy-in.
Finally, I give my sincere thanks to the SEARO Secretariat, especially the ICT team, for the hard work they put in to ensuring this first-ever virtual RC was seamless.
Our work to advance regional and global health continues, as it must, for the health, well-being and sustainable development of all people in the Region and across the world.
Thank you.