63rd World Health Assembly

Mr. President [outgoing President Mr. Nimal S. De Silva of Sri Lanka]
Madam Director-General [Margaret Chan]
Conseiller fédéral, M. Burkhalter
Conseiller d’État, M. Unger
Excellencies
Ladies and Gentlemen:

It is a great pleasure to welcome you to the Palais des Nations for the opening of the 63rd World Health Assembly. It is my privilege to convey to you the best wishes of the Secretary-General, Mr. Ban Ki-moon, for a productive Assembly, building on the important achievements in global public health over the past year.

You come together five years before the deadline for the realization of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals – the MDGs. Your focus on the health-related Goals is indeed timely and will provide a most valuable contribution to the high-level plenary meeting of the General Assembly, which will take place in September, aimed at strengthening the collective efforts to enable us to meet the Goals within the deadline.

Since the adoption of the Goals ten years ago, the world has witnessed significant successes in combating extreme poverty and hunger, expanding school enrolment, improving child health, increasing access to clean water and HIV treatment, and in controlling malaria, tuberculosis and neglected tropical diseases. The health-related Goals are not only key objectives in their own right. They are multipliers that hold the potential to help accelerate progress across all the goals.

Nevertheless, progress has been uneven – across individual goals and across regions – and if current trends continue, there is a real risk that several of the Goals will be missed.

We have made strides in addressing child mortality, but we still fall short of the target of a two-thirds reduction compared to 1990. The maternal mortality figures have barely changed since the adoption of the Goals and are a stain on our collective consciousness. After gains in the fight against HIV/AIDS at the beginning of this century, there are now worrying signs of a lessening of the commitment to this devastating threat to development and security. Donors currently give about $10 billion a year. Yet, it is estimated that controlling the epidemic would cost $27 billion annually. And for every two people starting on antiretroviral treatment, there are five new infections. These figures are simply not acceptable.

While we may not have made as much progress as we would have wished for, we can still draw valuable lessons to guide our reinforced efforts. This World Health Assembly is a most welcome opportunity for the international community to review these lessons and work to operationalize them so that we may scale up the efforts to meet the health-related MDGs.

Ladies and Gentlemen:
Inequalities continue to pose major barriers to preventive measures and access to health care and medicines. Fellow human beings in developing countries are at the greatest risk, are the hardest hit, have the least resilience and the fewest tools to address health-related challenges. This is often compounded by a considerable exposure to natural disasters and to the impact of climate change. The dramatic divergence in health status within and across countries continues to grow. The diagnosis is clear: unless we place justice and equality at the heart of the public health agenda, we will simply not meet the MDGs.

The challenges in the different areas of health are diverse, but the key elements in the treatment are similar. We need national ownership and effective Government leadership that strives to enhance the quantity, quality and focus on investments in the health sector. This has to be financed through a combination of domestic sources and international development assistance. There is also a clear need to develop institutional capacity to deliver quality health services equitably on a national scale, with adequate facilities, competent staff, appropriate supplies and effective monitoring.

Ladies and Gentlemen:
In our efforts to improve access and affordability of global public health, we need to maintain a strong focus on MDG number three – achieving gender equality. As we this year mark the 10th anniversary of the landmark Security Council Resolution 1325 and the 15th anniversary of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, we must face the fact that redressing gender inequality remains difficult and, in some areas, elusive. Yet, it has implications across all Goals. We cannot hope to achieve any of them – not least in the area of public health – if we do not step up efforts to empower women. They are drivers of progress and of lasting change.

Our collective challenge is to radically increase the pace of change on the ground so that we can translate the promises of the MDGs into real progress for the world’s poorest. We do have the knowledge, we do have the technology and we do have the resources, so we have a duty and a responsibility to employ them effectively in the service of vulnerable fellow human beings and for a better future for all.

In that spirit, I wish you a successful 63rd World Health Assembly.

Thank you very much.