Opening of the 58th World Health Assembly

Mr. President
Mr. Director-General of the World Health Organization
Excellencies
Ladies and Gentlemen:

It is a pleasure for me to welcome you all to the Palais des Nations. I have the privilege to convey to you the good wishes of the United Nations Secretary-General, Mr. Kofi Annan, for the success of this 58th World Health Assembly.

Health continues to be a central issue on the international agenda, and it is a key concern of the wider United Nations family. The Secretary-General’s report entitled “In Larger Freedom”, which outlines concrete proposals for the forthcoming High-Level Plenary Meeting of the General Assembly in September, affirmed health as essential to both security and development. Several of the Millennium Development Goals relate directly to health. Improved public health would contribute towards the realization of other Goals as well. These linkages between public health and the wider threats and challenges of the 21st century are clearly reflected in the comprehensive agenda before this Assembly, and your discussions here will stimulate the forthcoming high-level debates.
Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen:

Despite progress in a number of areas, overall the world is falling short of what is needed to achieve the Millennium Development Goals. As highlighted in “The World Health Report 2005”, infant and maternal mortality remains unacceptably high throughout the developing world. As the title of the World Health Report highlighted, we need to make “every mother and child count” because healthy mothers and children are the bedrock of healthy and prosperous communities.

Preventable, and in many cases treatable, infectious diseases continue to ravage developing countries, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa. While the prevention and treatment of malaria has made some progress, the disease still claims over 1 million lives a year. As the United Nations General Assembly recognized in resolution 59/256, adopted in December of last year, malaria-related ill-health and deaths throughout the world can be eliminated with political commitment and commensurate resources if the public is educated and sensitised about malaria and appropriate health services are made available.

HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis continue to pose severe risks for the entire world, particularly in light of emerging drug resistance. Despite increasing political commitment to fighting HIV/AIDS and encouraging signs in a small but growing number of countries, the overall pandemic continues to expand. HIV/AIDS kills more than 3 million people each year. It undermines social and economic stability and weakens governance and security structures, and hence it poses an unprecedented threat to human development and security.

While the number of polio cases worldwide has dropped significantly, the fight to eradicate the disease has suffered setbacks recently. It is therefore important to stay focused to ensure that the goal of total eradication is reached.

Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen:

Both familiar and new infectious diseases require a concerted international response. We need to strengthen international health security through better surveillance and monitoring and strengthened mechanisms for containment. Here we may build on the lessons learnt from the reaction to the outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), which showed that infectious disease can be contained when effective global institutions, such as the World Health Organization, work in close partnership with national health agencies and expert technical institutions. The successful containment of the recent outbreaks of bird flu and the slowing down of the spread of the Marburg virus can also be credited to rapid regional and international responses, mobilized to a large extent by members of the United Nations family.

The risk of outbreaks of infectious disease is closely connected with the serious threat of biological terrorism. As the Secretary-General states in his “In Larger Freedom” report, there will soon be thousands of laboratories around the world capable of producing designer bugs with awesome lethal potential. We therefore need to strengthen local health systems and ensure that our existing global response mechanisms are adequate. This is why the Secretary-General has urged Member States to provide the WHO Global Outbreak and Alert Response Network with the resources it needs to continue its impressive efforts in monitoring and responding to outbreaks of deadly infectious diseases, whether natural or suspicious.

As you recall, the United Nations General Assembly has urged Member States to give high priority to the work on the revision of the International Health Regulations. In his “In Larger Freedom” report, the Secretary-General has also called on this World Health Assembly to reinforce these existing mechanisms for timely and effective international cooperation in the containment of outbreak of infectious diseases. Agreement on a revision would significantly strengthen international health security.

The devastating earthquake and tsunami that affected the Indian Ocean on 26 December of last year also presented serious challenges for local and regional health systems. The recently concluded conference in Phuket, Thailand, convened by the WHO, drew important lessons from the tsunami response. As the international community works to improve its disaster preparedness and mitigation strategies, we need to ensure that the health dimension, including psychological trauma, is effectively factored in.

Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen:

As I have outlined, tackling the threats and challenges that face the international community – also in the area of public health – calls for firm partnerships among all stakeholders: Governments, international organizations, international donors, civil society, the private sector and the media. The provision of vaccinations – one of our most important instruments in the fight against many infectious diseases – is one of the areas where such partnerships have proved to be particularly beneficial, and I hope that we may apply lessons from such partnerships to other areas.

Implementation of inclusive strategic frameworks, provision of adequate resources and dissemination of reliable science-based information need to go hand in hand if we are to turn the advances of science and technology into opportunities for improved health for all.

I wish the World Health Assembly every success with its deliberations at this critical juncture.

Thank you very much.