Our Officer-In-Charge, Dr. Catharina Boehme, would have very much liked to attend this important meeting. However due to prior commitments, she is unable to do so. It is therefore my pleasure to deliver this message on her behalf.
I Quote:
Your Excellency Dr. Sudha Sharma Gautam, Minister of Health and Population
Secretary of Health Dr. Bikash Devkota,
Distinguished representatives from our Member States,
Senior Advisors, Experts, Partners, and Colleagues
A good morning to you all.
I would like to thank the Government of Nepal for hosting this 4th Annual Meeting of the South-East Asia Regional Forum for PHC-oriented Health Systems.
Thank you for allowing us to learn from Nepal’s history, innovations and current efforts towards advancing primary health care.
The SEAR PHC Forum was launched three years ago in Thailand, just as our region was emerging from the worst of the Covid-19 pandemic.
The Ministers of Health of our region—through their Declaration on ‘Covid-19 and Measures to Build Back Better’—seized the opportunity to build on pandemic learnings and identified ‘the imperative and once-in-a-century opportunity to advance transformation resilient PHC-oriented health systems’.
Recognizing the opportunity for collective learning and support, Member States at the subsequent Session of the Regional Committee specifically requested a regional platform for knowledge and experience sharing.
At the launch of the SEAR PHC Forum, then Regional Director Dr. Poonam Khetrapal Singh emphasized that “we must rely on and be steered by shared learning, synergy and action, focused not just on the ‘what’, but the ‘how’. No more can there be ships in the dark, moving roughly together, but never quite reaching port. Our objectives are simply too important, our responsibilities too great.”
Recent devastating cyclones across the Bay of Bengal remind us again of our collective responsibilities; of giving priority to the poorest and most vulnerable amongst us; and that hard-learned lessons of Covid-19 must not be forgotten.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
An important transformation is taking place across our countries in our Region: a transformation from a focus on a few select diseases to that of the full human condition, across the life course. This is borne out by our last five Ministerial Roundtables and associated Ministerial Declarations: 2021 ‘Covid-19 and Measures to ‘Build Back Better’; 2022 ‘ Mental Health Care’; 2023 “Strengthening Primary Health Care”; 2024 ‘Adolescent-responsive health systems”; and this year Ministerial Declaration “Healthy Ageing through Strengthened Primary Health Care”.
Across our countries, political commitments have been accompanied with action; ongoing establishment of “Arogya Centers” in Sri Lanka as illustration.. Yet, as we all know, assuring access to quality comprehensive primary health care is a major endeavour given the diverse contexts in which the almost 2 billion people of our region live.
Three years after the launch of the Forum, I am very pleased to see that new relationships have not only formed but matured.
The examples of collaboration are numerous, and I thank each of you for actively creating and contributing to a culture of shared learning, synergy and action. Still, there is more that we can and must do, faster, with greater impact on the lives of those most vulnerable.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
We are fortunate to be here together, at this moment, to meaningfully advance a vision that was first expressed almost a century ago in the establishment of the Kalatura Health Unit in Sri Lanka.
Challenges no doubt exist, but so too do more economic, social and technological resources than ever before. Along with a strong learning agenda, we can innovate for quality Primary Health Care and meaningfully advance the vision of Health for All.
My thanks again to the Government of Nepal, and I wish you all a fruitful and productive workshop.
Thank you.
Unquote
I echo that sentiment and look forward to coming discussions.
Thank you.