* Errors and omissions excepted (E&OE)
Distinguished participants, ladies and gentlemen.
Good morning. It’s a pleasure to be here with you, and to be invited to speak in this very important session.
I am a new Regional Director – I took up this post just in February this year, following a long election campaign. During the campaign leading up to the RD election last year, and in the months since, Member States of WHO’s Western Pacific Region have told me repeatedly that health security is at the top of their lists of health concerns – as it should be.
The Western Pacific Region is a known hot-spot for health security threats, which pose continuous risks to health, safety and development.
Over the past decade, the Western Pacific Region has experienced outbreaks of avian influenza in humans, Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS), Zika, dengue and a range of other emerging infectious diseases. Two of the last four influenza pandemics started here. The next outbreak may strike at any time – and it could lead to a pandemic, with potentially devastating human, social and economic consequences.
I had a very bitter experience during the SARS outbreak in 2003. Sixteen years have passed since then, and the question now is: are we safer from health security threats than we were a decade ago? Than we were in 2003?
The answer is both “yes” and “no”. Let me explain.
Yes, in many respects we are safer than we were a decade ago. We have learnt many important lessons from SARS and many other outbreaks and emergencies.
Countries in our Region have made considerable progress in strengthening their systems for health security and emergencies, guided by a common framework called the Asia Pacific Strategy for Emerging Diseases.
For instance, most countries in our Region have now established event-based surveillance systems – capable of detecting acute public health events including disease outbreaks and public health emergencies.
Nearly all countries (93%) have established programmes to train field epidemiologists to prepare for and respond to outbreaks. Public health emergency operation centres have been set up within Ministries of Health around the Region. And most countries can detect potential public health events much more quickly than before.
So we have made significant progress on making the Region safer. But does this mean we are now completely safe? No.
WHO has a system in place which operates 24 hours a day, 7 days per week, to detect and monitor all acute public heath events. The number of acute events we detect has not decreased. On average, we detect two acute events every week. However, the context in which these threats occur has changed dramatically, which has made health security threats more complex than ever before.
For example, the volume and speed of movement of goods and people has been dramatically increasing. Globally, the amount of air travel has almost doubled in the last decade.
So in the last few years we have had cases of diseases never seen in this Region before: yellow fever and MERS, for instance.
Interactions between animals and humans pose a particular threat in this Region: 75% of emerging infectious diseases in humans have a zoonotic origin. Related to the human-animal interface, antimicrobial resistance is also a serious health security issue.
Climate change is not only increasing the frequency and impact of natural disasters, it is altering the geographic reach of epidemic-prone diseases like dengue.
Many countries in our Region are experiencing rapid urbanization: in fact, some of the world’s biggest megacities are in our Region; and by 2050, three in every four people will live in an urban area – creating conditions in which diseases can very quickly spread.
The way people get information has changed dramatically. Today, more people get their information from social media than from traditional news sources. In the 2009 influenza pandemic, rumour spread faster than the virus.
So, what does all of this mean? I believe we are at a turning point: how we shape our health security systems now, will affect our ability to handle health security threats for decades to come.
I would like to make 5 key points here.
First, we need to make sure that our systems are expanded to the local level – so that local health services can detect emerging infectious diseases quickly.
Second, we need to strengthen our decision-making systems for response. The earlier we detect the event, the more uncertainty there is when we have to make decisions. This requires drawing on multiple sources of information and intelligence to inform decision-making.
Third, we have to communicate better. We simply must strengthen our communications. Communication has always been important in preparing for and responding to health emergencies and outbreaks, but it is now more important than ever before.
Fourth, as I mentioned earlier, our Region is a hotspot for zoonoses. We must continue to strength interface collaboration between the animal and human sector and such collaboration should include antimicrobial resistance – as the SDGs make clear.
And fifth, we need to continue to strengthen collaboration for global health goods. I believe we have to accept that while border control will always be important – it is no longer nearly enough. Diseases travel too quickly. The best way to manage disease outbreaks is to contain them at source. But not all countries yet have the capacity to do this.
In the Western Pacific, we take that context into account as we intensify our work to ensure that health systems are resilient at times of disease outbreaks and capable of responding, using pandemic preparedness as a foundation and opportunity to grow.
Thank you again for having me here, and I look forward to the rest of the discussion.