Magandang umaga, good morning, and a warm welcome to journalists who are here with us and those joining online for my first press conference as WHO’s Regional Director for the Western Pacific. It’s a pleasure to be here with all of you. My name is Dr Saia Ma’u Piukala, and I’m here to talk about a very important topic: the right to health.
“My health, my right” is the theme of World Health Day 2024, to be marked on Sunday April 7. This year, WHO has a really important message for governments and partners: we need to work together to fully realize people’s right to health.
In our most recent analysis, WHO found that 2 out of every 5 people living in the Western Pacific still cannot access essential health services. That is 782 million of the 1.9 billion people in the Region. That just shouldn’t be the case.
Every mother and baby deserve quality pregnancy and newborn care. Every child is entitled to life-saving vaccines. Every person who has an infection like tuberculosis or HIV, or a noncommunicable disease like diabetes or high blood pressure, should have access to diagnosis, treatment and care.
And no one should have to pay an unreasonable price for that care, or worse—be forced to choose between getting the healthcare they need or feeding, housing and educating their family. But this is the reality for too many people today. An estimated 1 in 5 people in this Region are paying 10% or more of their income in out-of-pocket health expenses.
This is considered “catastrophic health care spending”, and it has particularly severe consequences for the most vulnerable – poorer and less educated groups, and many of those living in urban and peri-urban areas.
Governments around the world committed to deliver on the right to health for the first time in 1948, when they adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It recognizes “the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being” of a person and their family as an “equal and inalienable” right for all.
They recommitted to fully deliver on the right to health in 2015, through adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals. Specifically, SDG3, focused on ensuring healthy lives and well-being for all people of all ages by 2030. Under this, governments should be working to advance universal health coverage, so that the whole population has access to quality health services without any financial hardship. We recognize that this is challenging, but it is vital.
Also, the right to health does not stop at health services. It also requires governments and their partners to provide other basic conditions for a healthy life. This includes equitable access to safe water, clean air, nutritious food, adequate housing, quality education, decent working conditions, and freedom from discrimination.
While progress has been made in many of these areas, we are a long way from where we need to be.
For example, nearly 300 million people in the Region are unable to afford a healthy diet. Sadly, in many places, highly processed foods and drinks that contain a lot of fat, sugar and salt are cheaper and more available than fresh fruit and vegetables. This, along with increasingly polluted environments, is contributing to a rise in noncommunicable diseases such as cancer, diabetes, heart disease and stroke.
Today, nearly 1 in 4 children over the age of 5 years and nearly 2 in 5 adults in the Western Pacific are overweight or obese. And these figures are growing. By 2048, an estimated 21 million people in the Western Pacific are expected to die each year from NCDs, accounting for 9 out of every 10 deaths in the Region. This is tragic but it is avoidable.
People also have the right to breathe clean air, drink safe water and use decent sanitation services. But more than 90% of people in the Western Pacific are breathing air that exceeds WHO’s standards for pollution; nearly 90 million people in the Region lack a basic drinking-water facility; and more than 400 million don’t have a toilet.
The good news is, this is all preventable. With political will and the necessary investments, all of these problems can be turned around.
So, whether you’re a journalist, a health worker, a teacher, a student, a parent, a community leader or a government decision-maker, please join us in spreading the word about the right to health, and calling for action to make sure that every individual, every family, and every community across the Western Pacific can fully realize their right to health.
And in addition to what I’ve shared about World Health Day, I’m joined here this morning by the Directors of the various technical divisions in the Regional Office, and the WHO Representative to the Philippines, Dr Rui Paulo de Jesus. They are all here to join me to answer any questions on issues including the current outbreaks of measles and pertussis or whooping cough in the Region.I thank you.