Xiong’An International Health Forum

Excellencies,
Ladies and gentlemen,

It is a pleasure and privilege to be with you today at the inaugural Xiong’An International Health Forum. I wish it much success.

Allow me to first of all thank the organizers - the Shenzhen World Health Foundation, the China Association of Chinese Medicine, and the China Institute of Strategy and Management - as well as its many supporters: thank you for bringing us together.

Over the course of the next days, we will hear from distinguished health experts, professionals and practitioners from across the world.

Among this impressive line-up of speakers, the contribution I want to make today is therefore not to offer the specialist’s perspective, but rather to take a step back, to take a more general view.
̶ A view that looks at health not as an isolated issue in itself, but as one piece in a large mosaic.
̶ A view that sees health not just as an outcome, but a key driver of progress - central to peace; critical to prosperity; and essential for equality.

And by taking this view on health - an integrated, holistic view - we are seeing the world through the lens of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

Because that is what the 2030 Agenda is all about: to make us look beyond the silo of our expertise by helping us recognize how every challenge we face - and every measure we take - has consequences that go further than we may realize at first sight.

Think about what you as health professionals are trying to achieve. Eliminate disease, treat illness. All true. But wouldn’t you agree that just as peace is about more than simply the absence of conflict, so too is health not just about the lack of illness? Rather, it’s about creating the conditions for well-being, both physical and mental, for every person everywhere.

But to get there, we need more than medicines and vaccinations, important though they are.
̶ To get there, we need to improve access to education, because child mortality would fall by almost 50% if all women in low income countries completed secondary schooling.
̶ To get there, we need a clean environment, because pollution accounts for almost 13 million deaths per year, as 9 out of 10 city dwellers live in unhealthy environments.

The 2030 Agenda is built around recognition of this interdependence, addressing everything from ending poverty and achieving gender equality to equitable economic growth to securing the rule of law. And it includes, of course, the objective to “ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages”.

But it goes further: with its 17 Goals and 169 specific targets, it provides us with detailed action points.

Think about it in terms of three imperatives that lie at the core of the 2030 Agenda:
̶ One, the imperative of prevention: the SDGs teach us to think long-term: Beyond headline-grabbing crises and deeper into their root causes. Focusing our efforts on prevention is cost-effective, sustainable and smart; but above all, it saves lives.
̶ Two, the imperative of integration and horizontal cooperation: the SDGs are universal and indivisible, with progress towards one Goal driving progress in all others. This indivisibility means that to achieve the SDGs we ourselves must overcome barriers towards truly collective efforts.
̶ And three, the imperative of diversity and leaving no one behind: The SDGs address every one of us and are everyone’s responsibility. Because to successfully implement the 2030 Agenda, we cannot rely on governments alone. Civil society and NGOs; private companies and philanthropists; city mayors and citizens - everyone needs to join in and to contribute.

So far on the theory of the SDGs. The key question, of course, is: three years since all 193 Member States of the UN agreed on the plan, how are we doing in our efforts in making the 2030 Agenda a reality?

The answer is not straightforward.

Because on the one hand, the SDGs have captured our collective imagination - and not just in the halls of the United Nations, but the world over. A new spirit, a new mindset of collaboration is spreading in ways that we’ve never seen before.

But on the other hand, we are seeing progress that is uneven at best and at a pace that is, frankly, too slow in too many areas.

And that includes progress towards Goal 3 on health.

Just last month, the World Health Organisation warned that, at the current rate, we will miss the targets on maternal and child mortality.

And we will miss the targets on HIV, TB and malaria.

We will miss the targets on family planning, universal health coverage and more.

Clearly, we must do something different.

We need to better operationalize the SDGs in our daily work.

Or put bluntly, we need to walk the talk towards collaboration and integration. We need to mobilize the necessary financial resources and expertise as well as strengthen synergies and learn from others’ best practices.

And we need to do so at all levels - from the global to the national levels and to the grassroots.
Start with the international level - where we need to get much more cohesive, agile and coordinated.
The good news is that progress is happening as we speak - in particular through the “Global Action Plan for Healthy Living and Well-being for All”, coordinated by the World Health Organization.

The fact that 11 heads of UN agencies¹ have signed a commitment to work together much more closely is unprecedented and very encouraging.

They’ve signed three commitments in fact:
̶ A commitment to align - from the way resources are mobilized to the way information is shared.
̶ A commitment to accelerate - from scaling up joint efforts, to joining forces to drive progress in global health.
̶ A commitment to account - from strengthening joint accountability to donors, to developing a common results framework.

Align. Accelerate. Account. These are the commitments of the world’s leading health organizations, but they strike me as just as useful at the national level.

Such commitments, complemented by many others, are crucial for realizing the Sustainable Development Goals. Governments will only be successful in their implementation of the 2030 Agenda if they bridge the silos between their different ministries; if they connect with their parliament; if they tie local authorities into a two-way exchange that links the urban and the rural, the capital and the regions.

And on this level, too, there is encouraging progress to build on and examples we can emulate.
Notably here, in China. Ambitious health reforms have expanded health insurance to more than 95% of China’s immense population and today serve as a model for universal health coverage.
And, as was mentioned earlier, President Xi Jinping has put health at the centre of the country’s entire policy-making machinery - taking exactly the kind of holistic view that sees health as the fulcrum for social, economic and environmental progress. That recognizes that health is an investment, not a cost.

And this brings me to the development is Xiong’An, which is a very encouraging example of operationalising the talk. I warmly congratulate you.

There is, of course, no “one size fits all” solution, and each country must pursue its own path toward universal health coverage. Still, China’s success reminds us that far-reaching transformation is possible.

And that’s why, in spite of all the challenges, I remain optimistic.

And my optimism is rooted not least in the incredible progress we have achieved in the past, whenever we pursued multilateral solutions.

Indeed, health has always been one of the standout success stories of multilateralism. Together, and in the past decades alone, we have:
̶ Increased life expectancy by 25 years.
̶ Eradicated smallpox.
̶ Turned the tide on HIV/AIDS.

I cannot overstate the magnitude of these achievements. And let’s not forget that they too seemed distant aspirations when we first began to talk about them.

What it took was collaboration and commitment.

What it took was courageous and creative leadership.

Which reminds me, as I am so often reminded, of someone who I know we all wish could still be with us, and who we had hoped could be here today: my former boss, Kofi Annan, our Secretary-General.

His legacy is endless, and his leadership in fighting the AIDS epidemic remains an inspiring example of how you translate vision into reality; and thus exactly the feat that we need to achieve now with the 2030 Agenda.

As you embark on your discussions, I hope you will take inspiration from Kofi Annan’s leadership - to reach high without losing touch with the ground; and to dream big without losing sight of the details.

And above all, to always remember that what we are doing is not discussing for discussion’s sake; not planning for the sake of having a plan. It is about saving lives and improving the world. It is about having a lasting and real impact over the next couple of days.

I wish you much success.

Thank you.




¹Seth Berkley, CEO, Gavi / Mariam Claeson, Director Global Financing Facility / Peter Sands, Executive Director Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria / Michel Sidibé, Executive Director UNAIDS / Henrietta Fore, Executive Director UNICEF / Lelio Marmora, Executive Director UNITAID / Achim Steiner, Administrator UNDP / Natalia Kanem, Executive Director UNFPA / Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, Executive Director UN Women / Jim Kim, President World Bank Group / Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General World Health Organization.