Remarks by WHO Regional Director for Africa, Dr Matshidiso Moeti, 26 August 2021
Monsieur le président ; Mesdames et Messieurs les Ministres ; distingués délégués ; chers partenaires et collègues,
Tout d’abord, je tiens à remercier sincèrement Monsieur le Ministre de la santé du Togo, le Prof. Mijiyawa Moustafa, qui a présidé avec brio la présente session du Comité régional. Veuillez transmettre ma gratitude au Premier Ministre du Togo qui a présidé la cérémonie d’ouverture au nom du Président de la République du Togo.
Comme l’ont mentionné plusieurs Ministres, nous attendons tous avec impatience le moment où nous pourrons nous réunir à Lomé !
I would like to thank the Vice-Chair of this session, the Honourable Edwin Dikoloti, the Minister of Health and Wellness of Botswana for having supported your function during this session and thank the bureau for their support.
Mes remerciements s’adressent également au Ministre de la santé du Bénin, le Prof. Benjamin Hounkpatin, premier vice-président de la soixante-dixième session du Comité régional de l’OMS pour l’Afrique, qui a présidé le début de cette soixante et onzième session.
Je tiens aussi à remercier grandement nos États Membres et nos partenaires pour les questions, les observations et les expériences riches et stimulantes partagées par les uns et les autres.
Dear Honourable Ministers, partners, colleagues,
I think we have had an extremely rich discussion in which we shared our experiences, ideas, and most particularly our commitment of the importance of health and our determination to work together in each one of our countries to improve the health of African people.
As far as polio is concerned, thanks to all the work and determination that we’ve done, we have reached and today or were yesterday celebrating the first anniversary of having eradicated polio from the African Region and of having received that certification.
I've noted with great encouragement, our continued determination to work until we have also gotten rid of all forms of polio on our continent and recognize that we are doing this in the context of continuing to work on the COVID-19.
I think it came out very clearly in the discussions today that we are now finding ways to leverage the capacities that we are building to respond from one crisis to the next, to address disease outbreaks.
So, we've seen a link very much in the work that you are doing on COVID-19, that capacities that have been built previously in preparing for Ebola outbreaks and the work that you are going to continue to do together on the polio outbreaks in our countries.
We've also agreed that we're going to work very hard together to ensure that we transition the polio capacities that have been so important in many outbreaks in the COVID-19, in the Ebola outbreaks and in other outbreaks so that we retain these capacities in our countries.
And I'd like to commit to you that as a Secretariat, we will work together as we develop your plans and as we manage this transition process within the Secretariat and mobilize the resources together to make sure that we don’t leave gaps, particularly in areas like immunization and preparedness and response to our colleagues.
You’ve expressed very clearly, Honourable Ministers and the partners the determination to progress towards Universal Health Coverage, to strengthen our health systems with a focus on primary health care as a strategy, to leverage technology and innovation and the capacity of our Region and to work with other sectors building on what we have done in the COVID-19 experience again towards improving the health of our populations.
So, I noted, like we discussed in the agenda, what you might call some old matters – immunization, which is such an important public health tool, which has proven itself in contributing to the remarkable progress in reducing under five mortality in our Region.
But where we have recognized that now, we need to relaunch an even more intense effort to reach those children who, because of their circumstances and because of other factors, are still being missed by this important public health tool.
We talked about tuberculosis and HIV which are regarded now as old problems that have been such important public health crises on our continent. And we are looking for different ways of working on these.
Again, based on the very huge experience, working on these two so-called old problems. We addressed cancer, cancer of the cervix as it happens. But this gave us the opportunity to look at the challenge that we face with regard to noncommunicable diseases in our Region, which are rapidly growing and fast becoming a leading cause of morbidity and mortality, recognizing that African people die earlier, younger from these diseases than people in other regions.
We are really encouraged by the determination to work on this cancer, making the link with immunization as a tool, but also looking at other factors that determine how we do in this field.
And then we found some issues on which to make more effort including hepatitis. Again, a major killer of African people in which, we do need to make much more effort, and we are proposing and very pleased with your response to the idea to take an integrated approach to dealing with hepatitis together with tuberculosis, HIV and sexually transmitted infections so that we leverage all the capacities, get efficiency out of investments in these areas and very much use our health systems to deliver.
A new issue we might see, which we discussed today was healthy ageing. And I have to confess to having a special personal interest in this considering that I am without any doubt the oldest staff member of WHO in the African Region. if I wasn’t the Regional Director I would no longer be working.
So, I join other elderly people in being very encouraged by the discussions that took place about healthy ageing and the determination to make sure that elderly people who play such a huge role in our families, in our African culture and in our African societies have their health needs addressed so that they can age healthily, as well as gracefully.
Many factors were discussed during our meeting - social exclusion being one including in relation to elderly people. And equity was a theme that ran through all of our discussions, triggered very much by the current situation in access to COVID-19 vaccines in the Region, but also relating very much to improving access to services in an equitable manner for every single person living in the countries in our Region.
The determination to move towards self-determination in local production of vaccines, for example, producing other health tools that we need came out very clearly in all of our discussions, and we as your Secretariat, we are very much encouraged by this.
We would like to add our own voice to the advocacy about the work that is about to happen. We're very pleased that this is about to start as far as vaccines are concerned and other tools.
And I would like to add my own voice in encouraging all the Member States to sign on to ratify the establishment of the African Medicines Agency, which will help our continent very much to make progress towards this ambition.
I will not touch on all the issues like we discussed, that would make a long speech, but I would like to thank you very much for the keen interest shown in the discussion of the Programme Budget and of sustainable financing for WHO and thank you for the support that you have expressed, for the proposals that the members, the Chairs and Co-chairs of the working groups briefed us about in this session.
I'd like to reiterate again that the Secretariat will make every effort to make sure that every penny that you invest in WHO that helps us to be independent, that helps us to be flexible, that helps us to address your priorities without having to be controlled by a small number of donors, I believe would be a good return on your investment. We would make sure that we manage these resources responsibly and that we address the various priorities, needs and contexts of each one of our Member States, and that we help you to achieve better health for African people working with the resources that you will allocate to your organization.
I'd like to thank all those who have supported the management of this meeting. First of all, very much thank our Chair, our host country, the Vice Chair and to all the colleagues who have taken part so actively in organizing and managing the various sessions, moderators, my colleagues, our translators, our interpreters, those that helped us to produce the documents that enabled you to prepare for the meeting, the speakers and the panelists, both the Ministers of Health for your very active engagement in the discussions and those people who helped us to manage the discussions in special sessions and say that as a Secretariat, we appreciate your engagement and how it helps us to find the best ways to develop the best strategies to help you in the work of improving the health of our people in the Region and on the continent.
And I'd like to say again to the Honourable Minister of Togo, thank you for inviting us to Lomé next year. I believe I speak for everybody who is here in saying that we look very much forward to joining then and in the meantime, we will be in touch with you, Honourable Minister, as we shape the next meeting.
We look forward to continuing discussions that are going on. In the meantime, we encourage our Member States very much and we will do our best to help you to participate in the Member States briefings that have become now a very strong feature of dialogue between the WHO Secretariat at the global level and the Member States.
And I'd like to thank, also just in reference to that, our delegates and our diplomats who are in the missions in Geneva for the role that they play in linking us with the global discussions and ensuring that you get your briefings, and you are able to participate in these global level discussions.
We've seen that these types of discussions among Member States are extremely important in shaping the agenda of the Organization, in making decisions that affect all of us, including on the support that you get from WHO.
So, I thank you all for your active engagement in these activities. Thank you very much, Chairperson and I’d like on behalf of our whole team in the Secretariat to say à bientôt, au revoir, see you soon and we will very much be keeping in touch through our WHO country offices and WHO representatives throughout the year until we meet in Lomé. Thank you.