Excellencies
Distinguished delegates
Partners, colleagues, and friends,
I would like to start by thanking you for your active participation, contributions, and commitment to make every birth and every death count in the Asia-Pacific region.
As we know, the health sector needs civil registration and vital statistics systems that are both resilient and inclusive. Resilient systems are able to operate even during times of crises and public health emergencies, and inclusiveness ensures the representation of the most vulnerable population groups.
In the WHO South-East Asia region, resilience and inclusiveness are central to much of what we are building and shaping.
I and our Regional Office leadership formulated a Roadmap to guide our work for my term as Regional Director. We took this document to our Member States, who endorsed it and have now mandated us to implement the Roadmap with its five pillars.
These five pillars enjoin us to focus on:
Mental health and well-being—ensuring a holistic approach to health.
Equity—prioritizing women, girls, adolescents, and vulnerable populations.
Technology and innovation—scaling digital health and AI-driven solutions.
Capacity strengthening—building and developing knowledge and the health workforce; and
WHO’s leadership and performance—enhancing governance, efficiency, and impact.
I am pleased three of these pillars have informed our discussions on CRVS during this conference, namely equity, technology, and capacity building.
We all broadly understand the importance of data and statistics in public health, and of course everyone here specifically knows the importance of CRVS.
Nonetheless, I’d like to take a moment to speak about the impact and import of CRVS when it comes to equity. I’ve just mentioned that one of my priorities is the health of women. It is no secret that even today, in the 21st century, many women around the world are marginalized.
This marginalization traps women into life cycles of illiteracy, domestic work, and reproductive coercion. They become invisible to the mainstream of policy, economy, healthcare and industry. Women are half of humanity, and yet – very often – hidden in plain sight.
The power of inclusive and effective CRVS systems brings these marginalized women out of the shadows and into the light. A simple birth registration can enable educational enrollment; permit social security nets; allow access to healthcare, insurance and so much more. What starts with a birth registration leads to a life which cannot be ignored.
This is the importance of the work you are all doing at this conference, and I thank you for that.
This conference itself is, of course, happening in the aftermath of two of the biggest shocks to global public health in a generation. Just as we made it through the Covid-19 pandemic, we have been hit with perhaps the greatest funding crises our community has ever known.
Yet, as we saw during Covid, challenges also bring opportunities.
In our region, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh reported that the pandemic accelerated the adoption of online civil registration services. These processes are now, as a result, more accessible and efficient.
We also know that many countries reported that the pandemic forged stronger intersectoral cooperation. It improved mortality data systems, demonstrating adaptability and the potential of these systems during times of global challenges. This bodes well for the future.
When we look at the current funding crisis, we also see the opportunity to expand our global public health community. We now have occasion to make a new cohort of people and institutions allies in our cause.
This, perhaps more than anything else, is the calling of this moment we find ourselves in.
All too often, our global consciousness is dominated by thoughts of economics; of politics; of war and peace. These are, of course, critical matters for the world to be seized with.
And yet, the one factor that cuts across any and all other issues is the most fundamental of them all – the health and wellbeing of everyone we hold dear.
There can be no economic boom we enjoy when our parents are ill; no peace to appreciate when our children are sick.
When battling disease, there is no workforce that can be completely productive; no community that can fulfill its capabilities and capacity.
Funding public health is funding more than it seems. It is an investment in economies and industries, in social justice, in peace and happiness. Most of all, it is an investment in the possibilities and potential of people – allowing effort, talent and creativity to thrive.
Today I reiterate our commitment as WHO, and call on member states, CRVS partners and global development donors to support our mission. I ask you to join us to ensure that across our land, all people benefit from universal and responsive CRVS systems. Together let us realize their right to health and wellbeing, and to social protection which leaves no one behind.
My thanks to all of you who made this conference a success. We come out of it with a Ministerial Declaration which is now our shared vision, co-owned by all of us. I will convey this vision to our Member States and partners in our next meeting of the WHO South-East Asia Regional Committee. I will work with our Member States to extend the CRVS Decade for action - not just a policy action, but as a moral, social, and economic imperative.
The path ahead demands bold action, and I am confident that we will succeed in this together.
Thank you for your work to make everyone count.