Your Excellency Minister Christopher Tufton;
Your Excellency my sister Secretary-General The Right Honourable Patricia Scotland;
Honourable Ministers, Excellencies, dear colleagues and friends,
The COVID-19 pandemic is not over anywhere until it’s over everywhere.
Although reported cases and deaths are now decreasing globally, it is misguided to think this pandemic is over.
Transmission is increasing in more than 70 countries, including many Commonwealth countries.
Globally, testing is declining, making us blind to the evolution of the virus.
And almost one billion people remain unvaccinated – again, many of them in Commonwealth countries.
We must continue to support all countries to reach the 70% goal as soon as possible, with a focus on those most at risk.
Vaccine supply has improved, but absorption has not kept pace.
Our biggest challenge now is supporting in-country delivery of vaccines.
For tests and new therapeutics, the problems are supply-side, with insufficient funds, and insufficient access.
More than 6 million deaths have been reported to WHO, but we estimate that the full death toll associated directly or indirectly with the COVID-19 pandemic was almost 15 million.
This is a stark reminder that we need to build a global consensus on strengthening the global architecture for health emergency preparedness, response and resilience.
WHO will present a detailed proposal on this to the World Health Assembly next week, incorporating the recommendations of the various independent review panels as well as those of Member States.
Excellencies,
Conflict, the climate crisis and COVID-19 are now converging to create huge spikes in food and energy prices, as well as inflation, meaning that food, health services and other life essentials are increasingly out of reach for many around the world.
To prevent this multidimensional crisis from turning into a death spiral for humanity, there needs to be a concerted effort to bend the arc of history towards a solutions-orientated, healthier and sustainable world.
The Commonwealth is an important multilateral platform to advance these efforts, and we look forward to the deliberations and decisions of this ministerial meeting, and the meeting of Commonwealth Heads of Government in Kigali in June.
I would like to bring four avenues for action to your attention.
First, supply of COVID-19 vaccines has now improved significantly, as I said earlier. We urge those Commonwealth countries that have not yet reached 70% vaccination coverage to scale up vaccine rollout as rapidly as possible.
WHO is committed to supporting your countries to identify and address the bottlenecks you are facing.
Second, I urge the ministers and heads of state of the Commonwealth to prioritize robust and sustainable financing for health, with a strong primary health care infrastructure accessible to all communities.
Building equitable and resilient health systems will be critical to ensuring a robust and inclusive recovery from COVID-19, and to placing the fight against both communicable and noncommunicable diseases on a sustainable footing.
The rich expertise in the use of digital health technology in the Commonwealth offers great potential to revolutionize the delivery of health services.
Third, I urge you to reaffirm your commitment to the ambitious Commonwealth goals, particularly on the elimination of malaria, trachoma and cervical cancer.
The trends in the global malaria fight have been deeply concerning for many years.
This was further compounded by the COVID-19 pandemic, which has resulted in increases in malaria incidence and mortality rates, particularly in high-burden countries.
WHO is especially concerned about emerging drug-resistant malaria in Africa. In collaboration with our colleagues in the African Region, we are developing a strategy to tackle this threat.
Turning the tide will require strong health systems, an expansion of access to essential health services, and transformative tools, such as the RTS,S malaria vaccine, which WHO recommended for wide use last year. Its deployment could save tens of thousands of lives every year.
As you are aware, the burden of neglected tropical diseases is also significant in the Commonwealth.
In India, Nigeria, Bangladesh, Tanzania and Pakistan alone, about one billion people need treatment for at least one neglected tropical disease every year.
You have already made an important commitment with regard to the elimination of trachoma.
In line with the latest WHO roadmap for neglected tropical diseases, I encourage you to expand your focus and advance efforts towards the elimination of all neglected diseases.
I’m aware that another major health challenge for many Commonwealth countries is cervical cancer.
This is an almost completely preventable and one of the most successfully treatable cancers, if diagnosed early enough.
It’s for those reasons that WHO has launched the Cervical Cancer Elimination Initiative.
Last year WHO prequalified a fourth HPV vaccine, to increase access and decrease prices, and the newly recommended option for single-dose HPV vaccine schedules will have a key role in accelerating elimination efforts.
WHO is committed to working with all Commonwealth countries to expand access to HPV vaccines and treatment services.
===
Excellencies, dear colleagues and friends,
My fourth request to you is to recommit to accelerating progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals.
The world is progressing at only around one quarter of the speed needed to reach the health-related SDG targets by 2030.
It’s urgent that all of us renew and reinvigorate our efforts to pick up the pace.
In particular, we need to work together to strengthen the response to the slow-motion pandemics of non-communicable diseases, the biggest killer in the Commonwealth, and antimicrobial resistance.
We also urge countries to set concrete targets for transitioning towards zero-carbon health care.
WHO is also committed to supporting small island states to build climate-resilient health systems.
WHO is committed to working with all countries to update their national health strategies and strengthen health systems, with universal health coverage at the centre of these efforts.
Excellencies,
The Memorandum of Understanding that WHO and the Commonwealth Secretariat signed in February has already started to bear fruit.
I am very grateful to Secretary-General Scotland, and her team, for the excellent collaboration our two organizations have developed.
I look forward to our continued engagement, including at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in June.
Thank you for your continued commitment, at home and abroad, to promoting and protecting health.
I look forward to your engagement at the World Health Assembly, and in the negotiations for a new international accord on pandemic prevention, preparedness and response.
I wish you productive discussion today and on Thursday and look forward to seeing you in Geneva next week.
I thank you.