Let me start with the wholehearted commitment that WHO will support the Every Woman Every Child movement as it has been doing, but maybe we can take it to a higher level. Let me take this moment to express my commitment.
Together the people in the room today have brought new momentum to ensuring women, children and adolescents survive and thrive. The Partnership for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health (PMNCH) has worked tirelessly to bring partners together over the past 12 years. It was an honour actually to co-chair PMNCH with my good friend and brother Kul Gautam some years ago. I wanted to thank him for his service and leadership.
So it is a real pleasure to be with you at this important meeting, to launch this report and to welcome new commitments to the Global Strategy for Women’s, Children’s and Adolescents’ Health.
As you’ll recall, in my vision statement for the WHO election process, I said we must not only place the well-being of women, children and adolescents at the centre of global health and development, but also position health at the centre of the gender equality agenda, because it’s political. So your area of focus on empowerment of women, girls and communities resonates strongly with me.
As a champion for sexual and reproductive health and rights, I believe every woman and adolescent girl can decide whether, when and with whom she has a baby, and be able to prevent any unwanted pregnancies. Because when women and girls can access family planning, they have better control over their own lives, their education, their ability to work, and their ability to support their families. It really is one of the basic ingredients of sustainable development. I am really delighted to see this as an Every Woman Every Child area of focus, which we all know.
And of course, your area of focus on adolescent health and well-being relies on sexual and reproductive health and rights but also goes further into important issues like adolescent mental health.
I am very happy to see early child development as an area of focus for Every Woman Every Child. In many countries 1 in 3 children fail to reach their full potential and in some countries, sad to say, it is as high as 2 in 3 children! This is a disaster for any country. This represents an economic loss of US$ 177 billion to the world economy every single year. We must focus on protecting brains of children in the first 1000 days, starting at or even just before conception as the rest of their lives depends on this. It’s the brains of children that defines the prosperity of society in the future.
Humanitarian and fragile settings – another area of focus for Every Woman Every Child – dovetails with WHO’s focus on health emergencies too. Women and children are particularly hard hit in emergencies and we need to take concrete steps to protect them.
Finally, the focus on quality, equity and dignity resonates with WHO’s top priority – universal health coverage. Nothing will help women, children and adolescents more than countries achieving universal health care. We should not accept anything less than that.
More than 400 million people lack access to essential health services and 40% of the world’s population lacks social protection. This is unacceptable. A disproportionate number of those people are women, children and adolescents. They are being denied a fundamental human right, because health is a right.
That’s why I believe it is vital for all countries to take steps to get closer to universal health coverage. And that’s why WHO is working with them to make that happen.
Universal health coverage is the centre of gravity of global health – but women, children and adolescent health is the centre of gravity of universal health coverage!
Achieving universal health coverage requires first and foremost political commitment. In relation to UHC, the most important element which is also missing is political commitment. It also requires benchmarking of countries and case studies of best practices at the country level. It requires innovation and it also requires data.
That’s why WHO is working with the Global Health Partnership (H6 group) partners and others, to track country, regional and global progress for all Global Strategy 60 indicators, including birth and death registration so we can issue reports like today’s.
Many of us will be back here in New York at the General Assembly in September. Let’s use that as an opportunity to come together again to make universal health coverage a reality for every woman, child and adolescent in the world. So they can truly survive and thrive.
Thank you so much.