Mr Chairperson,
Ministers Of Health,
Distinguished Representatives,
Colleagues,
Ladies and Gentlemen.
Good afternoon.
It is an honour to address you today and present the sixty-first report of the work of WHO in the Western Pacific Region —— a report that covers my first full year as Regional Director.
We have a full agenda this week.
I look forward to discussing the issues with you and receiving your guidance on how best to move forward with our ambitious programme.
But before we begin those discussions, I would like to take some time to update you on the significant progress that has been achieved over the past year and then turn my attention to what we wish to do this coming year.
When I first addressed the Regional Committee last year, I highlighted four priority areas:
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accelerating progress towards the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals —— particularly MDGs 4, 5 and 6: reducing child and maternal mortality, and combating HIV, malaria and TB;
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strengthening capacity in the Region to respond to public health emergencies;
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revitalizing our efforts to fight the rising tide of noncommunicable diseases; and
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strengthening the health systems that underpin all our programmes.
I set these priorities to ensure that these major areas would receive our full attention.
A detailed summary of our progress can be found in our annual report which covers the period from 1 July 2009 until 30 June 2010.
Just three weeks ago, the Director-General, Dr Margaret Chan, and I attended the United Nations MDG Summit and met with world leaders to review progress on the Millennium Development Goals.
The conclusions from the Summit were simple. Much has been accomplished.
Many lives have been saved, and many people have been lifted out of extreme poverty.
But much more work is still needed between now and 2015 —— the target date for achieving these goals.
Here in the Western Pacific Region, we can take pride in the fact that overall our Region is performing better than any other WHO Region.
We are on track to meet, or even exceed, the health-related goals.
But with one exception —— maternal mortality.
I find it shameful that women are still dying in child birth. As we all know, most of these deaths are preventable. So during the past year, I have paid special attention to this issue.
Among our Member States, Cambodia, the Lao People's Democratic Republic and Papua New Guinea are facing particular challenges but their governments are taking strides to address this issue.
I have visited each of these countries at least twice since I took office.
Each time I have worked closely with the Ministries of Health to support programmes to reduce maternal mortality.
Last February, I stood proudly by the side of the Minister of Health in Cambodia as he opened the National Maternal Death Surveillance Room.
Using mobile phones accessible in virtually every village in Cambodia, one day soon every single maternal death will be reported directly to the Surveillance Room.
The Minister of Health will be able to track progress and, most importantly, use this information to strengthen responses and target interventions to where they are most needed.
During my visits to the Lao People's Democratic Republic, I learnt about a community-based programme that trains voluntary health workers to become community watchdogs —— collecting health data and providing basic health education to villagers.
Most importantly they also support pregnant women to have their babies in health facilities and supply basic hygiene kits to women who deliver at home.
This life-saving programme will be rolled out across the country with support from WHO and other partners.
In Papua New Guinea, I was honoured to speak at the launch of the new 10-year National Health Plan.
I was pleased to see that this plan places a high emphasis on reducing maternal mortality by creating a government-led Maternal Health Taskforce.
I truly hope that these, and the many other initiatives that are now in place in our Region, will have a significant impact on reducing maternal mortality.
In terms of MDG 4 —— reducing child mortality —— the integrated management of childhood illness is making a substantial impact in many countries.
In Mongolia, for example, its successful implementation has led to a dramatic reduction in the infant mortality rate.
Much progress has also been made with MDG 6. Compared with 10 years ago, TB prevalence in the Western Pacific Region has been halved, the number of malaria deaths has been cut by over 50%, and the HIV epidemic, which once threatened to explode in this Region, has been contained and even reduced in some countries.
With malaria, we are now at a point where elimination is being discussed in some countries.
I would like to thank the Government of Vanuatu for the opportunity to see for myself how their ambitious elimination programme on Tanna Island is progressing and observe how an integrated health systems approach in such programmes could also help address other major public health problems.
My second priority area was strengthening the capacity in the Region to respond to disease outbreaks and public health emergencies.
The framework provided by the Asia Pacific Strategy for Emerging Diseases has proven useful in guiding our joint work on strengthening early detection and response capacities.
The H1N1 pandemic presented the first real test of the International Health Regulations (2005) —— and a test of our readiness.
Responding to pandemic influenza, as we all experienced, was not always easy.
Calibrating the response, dealing with uncertainty, communicating effectively, managing complex logistics —— all of these posed challenges.
But despite this, we, as a Region, came through this together.
The pandemic response demonstrated the value of our investment in capacity-building.
Information was shared between Member States in an open and timely manner.
Vaccine was donated and deployed to all 16 countries in the Region that requested it, and travel and trade disruptions were kept to a minimum.
The third priority area I highlighted last year was the urgent need to address the rising tide of noncommunicable diseases.
We know that tackling this issue is not easy and will take some time.
However, I believe that over the past year we have moved forward in building a solid platform that will serve us well in the future.
Let me give you a few examples.
When the Regional Committee met last year in Hong Kong, you agreed to set clear targets for tobacco control and committed to working towards a 10% reduction in tobacco use over the next five years.
An action plan to achieve this target has been aggressively pursued this year.
We are particularly pleased with the work this year that Samoa and Viet Nam are undertaking to explore the use of tobacco taxation revenue to fund health promotion foundations.
We are also delighted by the initiatives being explored in Australia, such as further significant increases in tobacco taxation and the plain packaging of cigarettes by 2012. Hong Kong (China) and Singapore are both working on stronger regulations.
These countries are trailblazers in tobacco control, not just in the Region but in the world.
We know that these types of initiatives save lives.
Access to good food and good nutrition in the Pacific are now critical issues that are directly affecting the health, security and long-term well-being of Pacific islanders.
I was pleased that WHO was able to work with Member States in the Pacific to host the Pacific Food Summit in Vanuatu in April of this year.
The Summit brought together three ministries from each pacific island country —– they were Health, Trade and Agriculture.
Also present were representatives from the food industry, nongovernmental organizations and other international agencies involved in the production and distribution of food.
The Framework of Action that was endorsed by the Ministers marks in my view an important step forward in acknowledging that food security is an urgent multisectoral issue.
Another approach to tackling noncommunicable diseases is the healthy settings approach —— particularly Healthy Cities and Healthy Islands.
By focusing on a "setting" rather than just a disease, we can push policy-making upstream and focus more on prevention and strategies to support healthy living.
We can also invite non-health sectors to join us in tackling life- style-related issues and addressing the harmful environmental conditions that are contributing to the rise in noncommunicable diseases.
We will have an opportunity to discuss this healthy settings approach in more detail later this week. I look forward to the discussion.
And finally, we have renewed our focus on strengthening health systems, the fourth priority area I highlighted last year.
With the endorsement of the Regional Committee and the support of our Member States, we launched two key initiatives this year —— a Health Financing Strategy that provides guidance on ways to increase health coverage for all our people, and a Laboratory Strengthening Strategy that emphasizes quality and building lab capacity across all programmes.
Other important initiatives have also been scaled up, including improving access to essential medicines, combating counterfeit drugs and strengthening the evidence base for the use of traditional medicine.
WHO has also re-engaged in supporting the national teacher training programme in the Region.
This programme improves the quality of medical and nursing education by, quite simply, teaching teachers how to teach.
This flagship WHO programme has been dormant for a number of years.
As a beneficiary of this programme myself when I was a professor, I am very pleased to report that we have revitalised this work and that national teacher training centres are now in the process of being established in some of our Mekong countries.
Finally in the area of health systems, I am pleased to report that the task to establish an Asia Pacific Observatory on Health Systems and Policies is well advanced.
The Observatory is a biregional initiative with the WHO South-East Asia Region. It will build a solid knowledge-base on health systems in the Asia Pacific region.
When we met last year in Hong Kong, I talked about the organizational reforms intended to strengthen our ability to serve Member States and to respond to emerging challenges.
All of the major areas of reforms have now been implemented and are becoming part of our daily life.
Some of the reforms have been structural, others technical, and a significant number have focused on human resource development.
A key structural change has been the reduction in the number technical units in the Western Pacific Regional Office from 31 units to 17 integrated teams.
In addition, the resources used to support the health needs of people living in the Pacific have been brought together through the formation of a new Division —— the Division of Pacific Technical Support.
The Director of the Pacific Technical Support Division also serves as the WHO Representative for the South Pacific.
The Director works closely with the WHO Representative in Samoa and the five Country Liaison Offices to ensure that our support can be better tailored to meet the specific and often unique health needs of people living in the Pacific.
As an additional step to improve our services in the Pacific, the previous medical officer position in Pohnpei has been upgraded and expanded to create a new Country Liaison Office for Northern Micronesia, serving Palau, the Marshall Islands and the Federated States of Micronesia.
In our Regional Office the three emergency preparedness and response units —— emerging diseases, food safety and emergency health action —— have also been brought together to form a new Division —— the Division of Health Security and Emergencies.
During the restructuring, we were careful not to increase the size or cost of the Organization.
We remain the same size —— just a different shape that is better tailored to meet the needs of our Member States. And the structural changes have had only a negligible impact on costs.
Throughout the last year, we have invested significant financial resources to develop a comprehensive staff development and learning programme.
An in-depth analysis of the skills needed by staff in different positions and at different stages in their careers was undertaken.
The results have formed the basis of a learning programme developed and implemented by us in this Region.
This programme is designed to meet the needs of each and every member of staff.
I am also pleased to report to you that the Western Pacific Region is the first WHO Region to implement a comprehensive staff rotation policy.
Under this programme, professional staff will move to different positions within the Organization approximately every five years. Rotation will bring fresh ideas and will enhance opportunities for learning.
Last year, distinguished delegates, you raised concerns about how our Regional and Country Office workplans are integrated and about our ability to realistically measure and demonstrate the impact our work.
I can tell you that we shared your concerns and have made some significant changes.
Following our meeting in Hong Kong, we embarked on a cross-cutting project to develop what we are now calling Technical and Country Strategic Frameworks.
You will have an opportunity to learn more about these strategic tools during the budget-related agenda items tomorrow.
You will hear how these tools have improved our ability to plan in a coordinated manner and to monitor the impact of our work.
Distinguished delegates, I have provided you with an overview of some of the technical and organizational progress over the past year.
More detail, as I mentioned earlier, can be found in our annual report and members of staff from the Regional Office who are here this week will be able to respond to questions you might have.
I would now like to turn to what we propose to do this coming year.
Over the past year, I travelled extensively to get a first-hand look at the public health situation in many of our Members States.
Looking out in this conference hall, I recognize many people I met during my country visits, and I thank you all for your generous hospitality and kind attention during my travels.
It is from these visits that I have drawn inspiration for my ideas for the coming year.
Next year I would like our Organization to do three things —— to push, to pull and to reach out. Let me explain.
First, we need to push forward with the priorities from last year.
I want to ensure that we push forward to achieve and exceed the Millennium Development Goals.
I want to push forward by making the Region a safer place by learning from the experience of the H1N1 pandemic.
I want to push forward with the range of programmes that are needed to address the rising tide of noncommunicable diseases.
And I want to use the momentum that has been created to push forward in strengthening our health systems.
At the same time I want to address "old-fashioned" diseases —— diseases that once attracted attention but have for a number of years been neglected.
I want to pull them back into the limelight.
We have unfinished business with leprosy, with lymphatic filariasis and with yaws.
Although most countries in the Region have eliminated leprosy, a few Pacific island countries are still reporting new cases.
The same goes for lymphatic filariasis.
There have been many success stories, but lymphatic filariasis still remains a public health issue in a few of the countries in our Region.
And yaws —— a disease we thought we had eliminated from this Region back in the 1960s —— is still causing disfigurement and suffering in some remote island populations.
I will be making it my personal mission to see that leprosy is eliminated from this Region before my term of office ends.
And I want to see lymphatic filariasis and yaws banished from the Pacific.
And then there is dengue —— an old disease that we have been struggling with for many years.
It is now the most rapidly growing mosquito-borne disease in the world.
Outbreaks are occurring in many countries in our Region, and the disease is spreading.
We have to think about new approaches and work much harder to confront this disease.
And lastly I want to see the Organization reaching out —— reaching out more to sectors beyond health.
So many issues, from antimicrobial resistance and emergency preparedness to noncommunicable diseases and the potential impact of climate change, cannot be tackled by the health sector alone.
We must take the lead in advocating for and supporting a multisectoral approach.
I wish, finally, to highlight the need for us to work closely together if we are to achieve the results we want.
We all know that it will not be easy to face the many challenges ahead of us.
But we also know that if work together, we can achieve a great deal.
I look forward, therefore, to listening to your advice and comments on the agenda items we have before us at this, the 61st session of the Regional Committee for the Western Pacific.
But I also look forward to having you telling us what more we can do ensure that we work together to achieve our ultimate goal of better health for all the people of the Western Pacific Region.
I would like to close by assuring you that I remain committed to you, our Member States, and to the people of this Region who deserve the highest level of health possible.
Thank you very much.