Your Excellency President Akufo, my brother
Your Excellency Chancellor Merkel,
Mr Spahn,
Your Excellency Prime Minister Solberg,
Commissioner Almira,
Excellencies ministers, dear colleagues and friends,
We have reached a new milestone in our journey towards a healthier, safer and fairer world.
The political declaration on universal health coverage endorsed yesterday is the most important, comprehensive international health agreement in history.
World leaders have unified around a shared vision of the world we want.
Today, the international health community is doing the same.
The Global Action Plan on Healthy Lives and Well-Being brings together 12 multilateral agencies, representing nearly one-third of development assistance for health.
We all have unique mandates and unique strengths.
This is a historic initiative to leverage those strengths to accelerate progress towards the health-related SDG targets.
Currently, we are off-track to achieve many of those targets.
The plan we are launching today is designed to get us back on track.
Our shared vision is to deliver a measurable impact in the lives of the people we serve.
And our shared commitment is to align, accelerate, account and engage.
We will align in support of countries.
We will accelerate progress in seven programmatic areas.
We will account for the results we deliver.
And we will engage with countries to identify priorities and plan and implement together.
It’s all about country focus, country priorities and country results.
I would like to use this opportunity to thank Prime Minister Solberg, Chancellor Merkel, the and President of Akufo for their leadership in requesting WHO to lead this process, and the leaders of the G20 for their support.
I would also like to thank the African Union for its continued leadership on health, and the governments and other partners who supported the development of the plan. The African Union has already shown its readiness last February, when it ratified the
call to action prioritizing universal health coverage and primary health care, and also agreeing to mobilize domestic resources.
I also offer my deep thanks to the principals of the other 11 agencies, who have worked with us in a real spirit of collaboration and solidarity.
Today is not the finish line, it’s the starting line to deepen our engagement with countries and with each other.
In Ethiopia we have a famous proverb: When spider webs unite, they can tie up a lion.
That’s what we’re doing.
We are uniting to tie up the lion of inequality. We’re uniting to tie up the lion of poverty. We’re uniting to tie up the lion of disease.
Individually, our webs are not strong enough. Together, we can change the course of history.
The 12 agencies, that’s what we believe.
Thank you so much.