Dear HIFA colleagues,
The World Health Assembly closes today and I thank again Dr Meena Nathan Cherian, Hannah Daniel and all HIFA members at the WHA for your dedication.
Below are extracts from Dr Tedros' closing remarks. On behalf of HIFA I express my appreciation to all our colleagues at WHO and for the opportunity to work with you on our 3-year Collaboration Plan towards universal access to reliable healthcare information:
https://publicspace.who.int/sites/GEM/official_relations_details.aspx?id...
The Full text of Dr Tedros' remarks is available here:
https://www.who.int/news-room/speeches/item/who-director-general-s-closi...
23 May - Geneva
Excellencies, Honourable ministers, dear colleagues and friends,
Mr President, Excellencies, dear colleagues and friends,
We have come to the close of this year’s World Health Assembly.
As always, it has been a demanding week, with long days and difficult negotiations...
At the President’s reception on Tuesday night, I used a Dominican expression I learned this week:
De poquito a poquito se llega lejos...
It means step by step, you go far.
That’s what the World Health Assembly is about.
We haven’t solved every problem this week. That’s not the point.
But on each one, we have taken a step forward...
Every resolution you adopt, every agreement you reach, only has value when it changes what happens in a clinic, in a community, or in a household;
When a health worker has what they need to do their job; when a child is vaccinated;
When a mother survives childbirth; when an outbreak is contained before it spreads...
That is exactly the point of multilateralism: not to pretend the difficulties of our world are not there, but to address them together;
Not to erase divisions, but to transcend them;
Not to supercede national sovereignty, but to reinforce it.
Because every nation is healthier and safer when all nations are healthier and safer...
This week, you have proved why the world needs a strong, empowered, independent and sustainably financed WHO.
The work you have given the Secretariat to do is essential, and its impacts are enormous.
They affect the health of individuals, families, communities, societies, economies and nations.
Over the past nine years, we have transformed the Organization to make it the WHO that the world needs and deserves.
And over the past year, we have restructured it to make it able, stable and sustainable.
This is not an Organization in crisis. Far from it. This is an Organization that is moving forward with confidence and purpose...
It’s a journey that we can only make together, as Secretariat and Member States, walking side by side, with our eyes fixed on our destination:
A world in which all people enjoy the highest possible standard of health, not as a luxury, but as a right.
Thank you once again for your commitment to that vision.
Safe travels, and hasta la próxima.
Thank you so much.
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HIFA profile: Neil Pakenham-Walsh is coordinator of HIFA (Healthcare Information For All), a global health community that brings all stakeholders together around the shared goal of universal access to reliable healthcare information. HIFA has 20,000 members in 180 countries, interacting in four languages and representing all parts of the global evidence ecosystem. HIFA is administered by Global Healthcare Information Network, a UK-based nonprofit in official relations with the World Health Organization. Email: neil@hifa.org