I want to welcome you to this media briefing forward of the Seventy-first session of the Regional Committee for the Jap Mediterranean which is able to convene between the 14 and 17 October in Doha, Qatar underneath the theme Well being past borders: motion, entry, fairness.
As you can be conscious, this 12 months’s session – my first as Regional Director – is being held in opposition to the backdrop of escalating battle which threatens tens of millions of lives and livelihoods throughout the Area.
Twelve months of battle in Gaza have resulted in 6% of your entire inhabitants killed or injured. Most of the injured are girls and youngsters who now face lifelong disabilities. 90% of Gaza’s inhabitants is displaced and residing in overcrowded shelters with restricted entry to meals, water, or well being care. And they’re repeatedly on the transfer, with additional evacuation orders issued over the previous few days.
Gaza’s well being workforce is dwindling, with nearly 1000 well being staff killed in line with the Ministry of Well being. Right now, Gaza is likely one of the most harmful locations by which the UN and companions function, with 289 United Nations employees killed since October 2023.
Lower than half of all hospitals are solely partially practical resulting from broken infrastructure, lack of gas, provides, human assets, sustained entry and ongoing assaults of well being. In reality, three extra hospitals in northern Gaza have been requested to evacuate over the previous 48 hours. Offering well being care in these circumstances is a frightening process, and we should as soon as once more pay tribute to the well being staff of Gaza who proceed to work heroically underneath unimaginable situations.
Out of 15,600 requests for medical evacuations, solely 5,130 have been accepted, leaving 1000’s of Gazans stranded with out important care. 96% of the inhabitants faces meals insecurity, and malnutrition, which was practically non-existent in Gaza has elevated, significantly amongst youngsters. Outbreaks of diarrhea and hepatitis A proceed, exacerbated by poor sanitation and overcrowded situations, which has additionally led to the re-emergence of polio. Dangers of different outbreaks persist amid diminished immunization charges.
For the previous 12 months, WHO and its companions have repeatedly referred to as for an finish to the battle in Gaza. Nonetheless, the scenario continues to escalate within the occupied Palestinian territory and throughout the Area.
I’m extraordinarily involved by the rise of violence in Lebanon. Since October final 12 months, nearly 12,000 individuals have been killed or injured, and greater than 540,000 individuals internally displaced. Well being staff are struggling to satisfy growing wants for emergency care in a system already weakened by successive shocks.
Well being infrastructure has been severely impacted, with WHO verifying 36 assaults on well being amenities since final October. These assaults have claimed the lives of 77 well being staff and injured 74 extra, together with 28 killed and two injured in a single day final week. The safety of civilians and well being care is a authorized and ethical crucial that have to be upheld. Assaults on well being care can’t proceed to be one of many defining marks of battle on this Area.
I want to now flip to Sudan, the place we face the world’s largest starvation and displacement disaster. Greater than 10.8 million individuals are internally displaced, and 25.6 million are in determined want of meals and well being care. Sudan’s well being system is in freefall, with 75% of well being amenities in Khartoum non-functional, and the scenario reportedly worse within the western Darfur states. Malnourished youngsters and moms are dying resulting from lack of entry to care, and cholera is spreading in lots of components of the nation. Assist staff face immense challenges on account of frequent entry denials and harmful safety situations. With out rapid intervention, famine and illness will declare numerous extra lives.
We’ve got seen what is feasible when well being is prioritized. The latest polio vaccination marketing campaign in Gaza, which reached 560,000 youngsters, and the opening of the Adre crossing into Sudan, which allowed the supply of important provides to remoted communities, present that even amidst disaster, vital impression might be made. However these moments are uncommon, and the necessity for sustained efforts is extra pressing than ever. Political options have to be prioritized earlier than battle engulfs your entire Area.
It’s a sobering actuality that greater than 100 million individuals– one particular person in six–need humanitarian help in our Area at the moment. The implications are clear– we can’t afford to depart future generations bearing the long-term penalties. These with the ability to finish the violence and accept peace have the gravest of duties. The time for them to behave is lengthy overdue.
Colleagues,
After that essentially prolonged digression, let me present a quick define of this 12 months’s Regional Committee.
In the course of the Seventy-first session, I’ll current the Regional Strategic Operational Plan 2025–2028 which tailors WHO’s international priorities – of selling, offering, defending, powering and performing to enhance well being – to the distinctive contexts discovered within the Jap Mediterranean Area.
To make sure the best attainable degree of well being for everybody within the Area, the operational plan consists of three flagship initiatives: on increasing well timed and equitable entry to life-saving medicines and vaccines; constructing a extra resilient well being workforce, and lowering morbidity, mortality and the social prices related to substance use issues.
The three flagship initiatives will function accelerators for the Regional Strategic Operational Plan which might be reviewed – and hopefully endorsed – by Member States.
The Regional Committee may also embrace discussions of precedence public well being points, technical papers, updates, panel discussions and a variety of aspect occasions.
The technical papers cowl matters from antimicrobial resistance and well being data programs to addressing the burden of trauma in humanitarian settings and scaling up psychological well being and psychosocial assist in emergencies. Regrettably, battle in lots of the Area’s international locations and territories means the necessity for these final two has by no means been extra pressing.
Antimicrobial resistance is a worldwide well being downside. The Jap Mediterranean Area has the best – and quickest rising – charge of antibiotic use of any WHO area. Antimicrobial misuse and overuse gas the event and unfold of drug-resistant infections. With out motion now, AMR might trigger 39 million deaths by 2050. That’s 3 deaths each minute. We urgently have to strengthen antimicrobial stewardship.
The Jap Mediterranean additionally faces an elevated trauma burden, the results of the a number of crises besetting the Area. But in lots of humanitarian settings already fragile well being programs have been severely weakened and broken, limiting the capability of well being staff to offer important providers.
The technical paper presents a framework for collaborative motion which is able to combine WHO’s people-centered strategy to tackling the trauma burden into the regional agenda. The framework relies on the SWIFT precept – trauma interventions must be secure, workable, intuitive, honest and well timed.
The technical paper on heath data programs units out a brand new regional technique to reinforce and digitalize nationwide data programs. It goals to make sure that international locations generate high-quality, well timed, related, disaggregated and dependable knowledge to tell insurance policies and programmes and to observe progress in direction of the health-related Sustainable Improvement Objectives (SDGs).
Psychological well being accounts for five.1% of the worldwide burden of illness and 5.4% of the illness burden within the Area. A technical paper presenting a regional motion plan for psychological well being and psychosocial assist in emergencies, masking 2024–2030, might be reviewed in the course of the Regional Committee earlier than the plan is offered to members for endorsement.
Amongst scheduled discussions, panelists will tackle methods to nurture the alternatives and mitigate the dangers of utilizing synthetic intelligence to assist construct common well being protection and well being safety throughout the Area.
Ministers of well being and different members may also be up to date on the newest work of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Physique (INB), and the progress of polio eradication within the Jap Mediterranean Area.
Contributors may also obtain the newest updates on the well being and humanitarian scenario within the occupied Palestinian territory
Within the meantime, I invite you to go to the Regional Committee web site to view technical papers and different RC paperwork, together with the provisional agenda and progress reviews on the a number of well being threats featured in resolutions from earlier classes of the Regional Committee.
