*Errors and omissions excepted (E&OE)
Good morning or good afternoon everybody. Welcome to journalists both here in Manila and online across the Western Pacific Region.
Thank you very much for joining us for this background briefing on the 74th session of Western Pacific Regional Committee of WHO which will take place here in Manila next week.
The Regional Committee is our most important governing body. It takes decisions on policies, strategies, budget, and holds the Secretariat accountable. It is made up of ministers of health and senior representatives from ministries of health and foreign affairs of the 37 countries and areas of the Western Pacific Region, which constitutes a quarter of the world’s population. So this is a very important event for us – the most important event – for which we prepare throughout the year. Whenever we finish a Regional Committee, we start preparations for the next one.
This Regional Committee is of particular importance for us for two reasons: Firstly, because we are celebrating the 75th anniversary of WHO. You might recall that a couple of months ago, we had a press conference to discuss the major achievements and also the challenges that we still face in this Region. Secondly, because the Member States will vote to nominate the next Regional Director who will take office on the first of February 2024 for five years.
You may recall that we held a Candidates’ Forum on the 15th of September, which was the first Candidates’ Forum organized in this Region. It was followed by a similar Candidates’ Forum in the Eastern Mediterranean Region. And due to the feedback that we received, which was overall very positive, I am sure that WHO will institutionalize these Candidates’ Forums in the future, and there will be a discussion on this in the Executive Board later this year and early next year. The reason why we wanted to have this Candidates’ Forum is partly to ensure transparency of the process, and partly to facilitate the decision-making process of the Member States. It was one month before the Regional Committee – this is the perfect time for Member States to discuss which candidate they should support.
The election, first of all, will take place on Tuesday the 17th of October, the second day of the Regional Committee. As you might remember from the Candidates’ Forum, Member States will choose from among five candidates:
Dr Song Li, proposed by China
Dr Susan Mercado, proposed by the Philippines
Dr Jimmie Rodgers, proposed by Solomon Islands
Dr Saia Ma’u Piukala, proposed by Tonga
Dr Tran Thi Giang Huong, proposed by Viet Nam
The interviews and voting will take place in a closed-door session, because this is what our rules of procedure require. However, the livestream will resume on Tuesday afternoon to announce the result of the vote. Following this, the process will continue because the Executive Board in WHO Headquarters will have to approve the nomination from the Regional Committee, and that will only take place in January 2024. Therefore, the new Regional Director will take office on the first of February 2024.
In addition to the Regional Director nomination, delegates will also discuss many other important issues and items and agree on actions to address them. These will include global as well as regional issues – all of which are priorities for the Western Pacific Region. Among them, there are four important technical items: health security, the health workforce, communication for health, and health innovation. I will come back to these four issues in a minute to give you more details. Other issues that will be addressed, are governance issues – particularly some updates to the rules of procedure, and implementation of some global decisions from the World Health Assembly and Executive Board, as well as the transformation of the Regional Office to ensure that it is a respectful workplace that unlocks the full potential of our Organization and staff.
This takes me now to the four technical items that I would like to address a bit more in detail.
The first one that will be considered by Member States is the Asia Pacific Health Security Framework. This framework builds on the achievements of the past 20 years and follows on from three iterations of the Asia Pacific Strategy for Emerging Diseases and Public Health Emergencies (APSED).
The Western Pacific is no stranger to public health emergencies. Infectious diseases like COVID-19, the spread of antimicrobial resistance, extreme weather events due to climate change are becoming more frequent and more destructive.
The risk and complexity of these threats is also heightened by population growth, by urbanization and environmental degradation.
As demonstrated by the pandemic we have just been through, the impact of public health emergencies goes far beyond health, and they affect the social and economic growth and development of countries. They also widen existing health and social inequities and disproportionately impact the most vulnerable and hardest-to-reach.
All of these challenges underscore the need for building, strengthening and improving capacities and systems to rapidly detect, strengthen, respond to, prevent and recover from any health emergency at subnational, national or regional levels. This will be the focus of the new regional framework that countries will consider next week in the Regional Committee.
Then Member States will also consider a Regional Framework to Shape a Health Workforce for the Future of the Western Pacific – a big priority both globally and also in the Region.
The health workforce we have today is not fully prepared to meet the expanding and changing health needs of the Region’s population.
There is chronic under-investment in education and training of health workers in some countries and there is also a mismatch between education and employment strategies in relation to health systems and population needs. These are contributing to continuous shortages of health workers.
And the problem is compounded by difficulties in deploying health workers in rural, remote and underserved areas, as well as increasing international migration.
The Framework proposed next week aims to ensure the right number of health workers with the right mix of skills are in the right places across the Region.
Member State representatives will also consider the Regional Action Framework on Communication for Health.
Communication, when used strategically, can be powerful tool to address growing and complex health challenges. It can change people’s knowledge, attitudes and behaviours and empower them to make choices that help to protect and improve their health and that of their family and community.
In the digital age, communication is more important than ever, but using communication strategically requires expertise, skills and resources.
To leverage the full power of strategic communication to improve health and well-being, and to help Member States achieve their public health goals, we have developed and begun using ‘Communication for Health’, or the C4H approach.
C4H is a set of principles and practices to help ensure communication is designed to inform and change attitudes and behaviours in ways that support the achievement of defined public health outcomes, such as increasing the uptake of vaccination or decreasing tobacco use.
The Framework aims to guide Member States on how to take such a strategic approach to communication in order to achieve their health goals.
And finally, Member States will consider a Regional Health Innovation Strategy for the Western Pacific.
Much of the progress in public health historically has been driven by innovation. From the rapid development of genomic surveillance, data sharing and mRNA vaccines for COVID-19 to mental health chatbots and solar-powered oxygen concentrators, health innovation has improved health and well-being around the world.
But despite the diversity and abundance of innovations in the Region, many have had limited success tackling health challenges or contributing to population well-being.
Health areas with limited market appeal have been marginalized, such as treatment of neglected tropical diseases and development of new antibiotics.
This has left behind vulnerable populations with the greatest needs and hindered efforts to achieve health equity.
The strategy aims to support Member States to foster a conducive environment for health innovation, make use of them, and establish an effective regional mechanism for collaboration and knowledge transfer to reduce health disparities.
So these will be the four technical topics on the agenda. They are very important ones, which will guide the priorities of this Region in the coming years.
There will also be some other issues discussed, like the Fourteenth General Programme of Work, which is WHO’s global vision for the next five years. This is connected with an attempt to ensure that we regularly monitor impact and results in countries through indicators agreed with the Member States – the so-called Impact Delivery and Results Framework. We will also discuss an investment round, to find funding for the whole General Programme of Work for the next five years. The idea is to do this up front, so that we avoid having “pockets of poverty” for high priority areas of the work of Member States and WHO. Beyond this, we will also discuss the Pandemic Accord, which is a piece of work being developed by WHO Headquarters in Geneva. At the same time, we are also updating the International Health Regulations. Both of these build on learnings from the COVID-19 experience, where we noticed – together with Member States – a number of weaknesses. These are the weaknesses that we are addressing now in the Pandemic Accord and also in the International Health Regulations.
And then, as I mentioned, we will discuss the Transformation of the Regional Office which has been a priority for us in the last year, and we will make sure that this office is a respectful workplace in every aspect, that every staff member is treated well and is happy to come to work.
During the week, we will also take stock of the progress that we have made in our shared vision For the Future. This will be covered on the first day, during the Regional Director’s Report in which we report back to the Member States.
And, of course, as all the ministers are here, this will give us a unique opportunity to meet with them and to discuss bilateral issues and bilateral priorities, sign country cooperation strategies when they are ready, and have many interactions with country delegations.
So, this is from me as an introduction, and we are here with all my colleagues, the directors, and we are happy to respond to any questions that you may have.