Distinguished participants and colleagues,
Ladies and gentlemen:
Good morning and welcome to the Bi-Regional Meeting of the Technical Advisory Group on the Asia Pacific Strategy for Emerging Diseases or APSED.
I would like to thank the members of the Technical Advisory Group—or TAG—for their continuous support in the ongoing implementation of APSED and for being here today.
In addition, I will take this opportunity to welcome participants from partner organizations and Member States in the Western Pacific and South-East Asia regions. I would like to emphasize that this is a unique biregional effort. We are grateful for your contributions.
Over the past year, we have seen the growing importance of global and regional health security.
We were reminded that the Asia Pacific region remains vulnerable to infectious disease threats — whether they originate far away or close to home.
Overall, we saw the central role of strong health systems in protecting and promoting a country’s development.
We all saw how the Ebola outbreak devastated countries with weak health systems in West Africa. In many ways, the outbreak reinforced lessons in response and preparedness.
We saw the need for global solidarity to deal with such complex crises.
We saw how Member States globally and WHO deployed experts from all levels to Africa for support.
Member States in the South East Asia and Western Pacific Regions and WHO have deployed experts to Africa for support.
The WHO Western Pacific Regional Office and its Member States provided on-site support through the Western Pacific Ebola Support Team. Thank you again to Member States that sent experts to Africa to help fight Ebola.
More recently, we saw the effects of the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, or MERS, outbreak closer to home — in the Republic of Korea, China, and Thailand.
The outbreak is the largest ever outside of the Middle East since MERS was first reported in 2012.
Once again, we witnessed how infectious diseases do not respect international boundaries.
For this reason, we must always stay vigilant and prepared to respond rapidly for such events.
The Asia Pacific Strategy for Emerging Diseases was conceived nine years ago as the framework for the region to develop core capacity requirements under the International Health Regulations.
I congratulate Member States on their progress in better preparing the Asia Pacific region. However, more investment is required to maintain and strengthen regional health security.
As we are nearing the completion of APSED (2010) implementation, we will review a comprehensive evaluation and several outbreak reviews to gauge our progress.
During this meeting we will report the findings of these activities.
Besides looking back, it is also time to look forward and determine how we can build upon the accomplishments of APSED for a new strategy or framework for action. It is a critical time to decide how to move forward with strengthening Regional health security.
I wish you all successful and fruitful deliberations. I hope this meeting will help guide us in identifying collective actions for advancing regional health security.
Again, welcome and enjoy your stay in Manila.
Thank you.