Speech By Dr Bardan Jung Rana, WHO Representative to Bangladesh
- Honourable Chair,
- Respected Chief Guest, Honourable Minister of Health and Family Welfare,
- Distinguished guests in the dais,
- Colleagues, ladies, and gentlemen,
It is my pleasure to attend this special event today to mark the launch of the Special Initiative for Mental Health, the fruit of the spreading awareness that there can be no health without mental health.
This Special Initiative was globally started in 2018 when WHO Director-General stated the need to ensure that WHO’s ultimate goal, Universal Health Coverage, involves access to quality and affordable care for mental health conditions. It aims to advance mental health policies, advocacy, and human rights and scale up quality interventions and services for individuals with mental health conditions, including substance use and neurological disorders.
Bangladesh was among the first six countries selected under the Special Initiative, and it participated in the first consultation on this Initiative at the WHO HQ in Geneva in January 2020.
The country presents a prevalence of any mental disorder among adults of 16.8% and 12.6% among children, while the treatment gap of mental disorders is 92% among adults and 94.5% among children.
The Government of Bangladesh has been a pioneer in the South-East Asia Region in including mental health as one of the top ten health priorities in its national agenda.
Over the past year, despite the challenges globally posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, the country undertook many actions to implement the Initiative. In 2020, the University of Washington, WHO and the Government of Bangladesh released a situation analysis of mental health in the country. The findings point at the need to step up the national services to address mental disorders and highlight the need to allocate adequate human resources to adequately inform and spread awareness among the communities.
We are confident that in the next four years, Bangladesh will once again prove to be a model for emulation by focusing the national interventions on making quality mental health services accessible to all.
Leaving no one behind is WHO’s mission and ultimate goal, and today I reiterate WHO’s commitment to supporting the government and people of Bangladesh in ensuring equitable access to high-quality mental health services to all. We must invest in health systems, and we must take care of the most vulnerable and neglected groups, as there can be no health without mental health.
Thank you.