Honourable Mayor Lee, Mayor Garcia and Mayor Dato Chan;
Distinguished experts and participants from Member States;
Esteemed colleagues, ladies and gentlemen:
I am pleased to welcome you to this consultation on the Regional Framework for Urban Health (2016─2020) and discussions in preparation for next year's Ninth Global Conference on Health Promotion.
As you know, the Western Pacific Region is rapidly urbanizing. Already one out of every two people live in cities, and hundreds of millions more are expected to call cities their home in the coming years.
The Region is home to nine of the world's 28 megacities, including Metro Manila.
We are also witnessing significant peri-urban growth, as cities expand beyond their formal borders.
All these factors create pressures on the physical environment, the social fabric and individual lifestyles.
Healthy Cities are expected to be a key part of the post-2015 sustainable development goals. As such, the growth of cities will be high on the agenda of the Ninth Global Conference on Health Promotion, to be held in Shanghai, China, in November 2016.
Cities have always been engines of growth. In many countries in Asia and the Pacific, cities generate more than 80 per cent of the gross domestic product.
Our challenge is to make maintain cities as centres of growth, productivity and innovation while making them more liveable and sustainable.
Unfortunately, unmanaged urban growth has created many pockets of poverty, social unrest and poor health, especially among vulnerable populations.
Rapid and unplanned urbanization has increased the number of slums and informal settlements that often lack basic services. A study of six countries of the Region found that 212 million people lived in slums — often without sufficient access to safe water, adequate sanitation, health services or police protection.
In addition, cities now face increasingly complex challenges from climate change, migration, globalization, more motor vehicles, disasters, changing lifestyles and demographic ageing.
Without effective governance, city governments and urban health systems may be overwhelmed and unable to respond to the needs of citizens.
To assist Member States, WHO developed the Regional Framework for Scaling Up and Expanding Healthy Cities (2011-2015).
Now, we must move beyond advocating Healthy Cities as a response strategy. We must shift to a future-oriented or AMA strategy, which stands for “anticipate-mitigate-adapt”.
The new the Regional Framework for Urban Health (2016─2020) helps assess cities' level of resilience — or their ability to prepare for, respond to and recover from significant threats — as a basis for prioritizing action.
The new framework takes a more comprehensive approach by addressing the increased health risks in cities — such as recurrent flooding, poor air quality, traffic and road congestion, unsafe or unhealthy food, dengue and other infectious disease outbreaks, to name a few.
Indeed, we have learnt much about assisting Member States to create healthier cities over the past five years.
We have seen how local governments are able to accomplish much more with strong national support — especially with in dealing with larger issues such as climate change and social or demographic trends.
We have also seen the value in consultations such as this one to make certain that strategies address the real issues cities are facing in a realistic way.
Your input and recommendations throughout this consultation will help greatly in this regard.
In particular, I would like to acknowledge the excellent participation of mayors and local government officials. Your commitment to the health and well-being of your citizens drives the vision of healthy and resilient cities.
Again, thank you all, and I wish you a very productive consultation.