My dear colleagues,
In some ways, it seems like only yesterday that I walked through the front doors of this building as Director-General for the first time.
In other ways, it seems like a lifetime ago, because we have achieved so much together in such a short space of time.
The past four months have been some of the most humbling and motivating of my life.
I have been to some amazing places. I have met Presidents and school students, the world’s richest and the world’s poorest. I have travelled from global capitals to hospitals in Yemen.
But by far the most inspiring interactions have been with you, my colleagues, in the field, in regional offices and here in the headquarters.
You have heard me say repeatedly that the greatest asset of any organization is its people.
I say that because I believe it, and it’s what I have seen throughout my career.
Without people who are talented and motivated, we can achieve nothing.
In fact, nothing gives me more confidence that we will succeed in our mission than meeting you, my colleagues. Your passion, experience and talent give me great hope.
At the end of my speech I will be acknowledging some of the incredible achievements of our colleagues.
A lot has been said and written about me in the past year. But WHO is not about me. It is about all of us, and most importantly it’s about the people we serve.
We all have a part to play, from G1 to DG and everything in between. None of us is more important than the other. I believe the difference between us is simply a division of labour. Every single one of us is important.
That’s why my first meeting after being elected was with the Staff Association. Not donors. Not powerful Member States. The Staff Association. Together, we identified 10 issues that we are now taking action to address.
I have met regularly with our Regional Directors, ADGs, directors, clusters and country offices, but I also wanted to open my door to all staff.
So I instituted “Open Hour” and invited you to come and talk to me about any issue, every Thursday I’m in Geneva. So far I’ve met with more than 60 staff, just to listen to their ideas and concerns. It’s wonderful.
I also asked you to send me crazy, creative ideas for how to make WHO better. Hundreds of ideas flooded in. More than 90 percent of country offices and headquarters departments responded, with many great ideas that will be taken forward as part of the General Programme of Work, or our five-year strategic plan, and the WHO Transformation Plan.
Please don’t stop sending your ideas. We will continue to need them.
As you know, in early October I appointed the most diverse leadership team in WHO’s history. For the first time, women outnumber men in our top ranks.
If you haven’t had the time to meet them yet, they are a truly remarkable group of people.
All six WHO regions are represented, and 15 different countries. But I did not choose these people simply to tick boxes. I chose them for the experience, talent and knowledge they bring to our organization. Gender parity and geography were also considered, but the foundation was talent.
Together, we are in a strong position to build the WHO of the future.
I would like to talk to you now for a few moments about what that future looks like.
Since WHO was founded in 1948 we have had a clear vision, for a world in which all people can enjoy the highest attainable standard of health.
That has not changed, because it’s a compelling vision.
But until now, we have lacked clarity in our mission. In the course of all the discussions I have had with you, and the Member States, partners, donors, civil society and the private sector, I have come to realise that the world expects WHO to do three things:
Promote health, keep the world safe, and serve the vulnerable.
That’s our mission.
And in many ways, we already do all three. But we can and must do better.
For that reason, I decided to fast-track the process of developing the next General Programme of Work, our strategic plan for the next five years.
Normally the GPW takes years to develop. But with your intense effort, working around the clock, we prepared a draft in just six weeks. This is a huge achievement, and I want to thank you all for your hard work to make it happen.
The GPW has now been discussed at all six regional committee meetings, with all Member States, and with all of the WRs on Monday of this week. We asked them to tear it apart, poke holes in it, and suggest ways to make it stronger. Still it’s a document under construction. Continue to give us your comments.
The GPW will now be discussed at a special session of the Executive Board in November.
Our aim is to have a version that can be approved by the World Health Assembly in May next year.
Effectively, this will condense the whole process of GPW preparation from 24 months to 8 months. We have agreed that we need to do our business with a sense of urgency.
We’re doing this because if we are serious about achieving our mission, we must act with urgency. We will not get there by doing business as usual.
Every day we wait, people get sick and die because they are too poor to pay for health care.
Every day we wait, millions of people are at risk of the deadly effects of epidemics, because of inadequate health systems.
Every day we wait, infectious and non-communicable diseases continue to wreak havoc in the lives of individuals, families and communities.
So we cannot wait.
The new GPW outlines three strategic priorities for WHO: universal health coverage, global health security, and the SDG health targets.
First, universal health coverage. This is our core business, and has been since our birth.
WHO was founded on the conviction that health is a human right. It’s a conviction I share. No one should get sick and die just because they are poor, or because they cannot access the health services they need.
But to help us focus, we are setting ourselves a target to see 1 billion more people with health coverage by 2023.
The second priority is to strengthen global health security. The world must never again experience another disaster like Ebola.
As you know, the process of reforming WHO’s emergency operations began under Dr Margaret Chan, our sister, and already we are doing a much better job.
When I traveled to Yemen in August, I was so impressed to see that WHO is playing a critical role in coordinating many partner organizations. Our work there has saved thousands of lives.
In Bangladesh, we have worked with UNICEF and MSF to vaccinate more than 700,000 people. In fact, this is the second-largest oral cholera vaccine programme in the world.
In Madagascar, we acted rapidly across all three levels of the organization, with our partners, to bring an outbreak of plague under control in just one month.
This is what it means to keep the world safe.
We should all feel very proud of these achievements.
But there is more we can do.
In the last four months, we have put new measures in place to run our emergency operations more like a national security setup. Every day I receive a briefing note summarizing the status of all global health emergencies.
We have also instituted the WHO Health Security Council, a fortnightly meeting chaired by me and Peter Salama. The Council focuses solely on health emergencies and how we are responding to them.
To keep our eyes fixed on this goal, we are proposing a target of 1 billion more people made safer from the direct impact of health emergencies.
So, the first priority is universal health coverage. The second is global health security.
The third is to drive progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals. The SDGs are the foundation of all our work. They are the priorities on which the world has agreed. They must be our priorities. There is no need to reinvent the wheel.
But WHO is also the custodian of several specific SDG targets, and we will focus our attention on four specific areas:
- improving the health of women, children and adolescents;
- ending the epidemics of the “big 4” infectious diseases: HIV, tuberculosis, malaria and hepatitis;
- preventing premature deaths from noncommunicable diseases, including “the big 4 plus one” of cardiovascular disease, cancer, chronic lung disease, diabetes and mental health; and
- protecting against the health impacts of climate change and environmental problems, and of course, antimicrobial resistance.
The proposed target in the draft GPW is to improve the lives of 1 billion people by making progress towards the SDG health targets.
These are the strategic priorities. 1 billion more people with health coverage. 1 billion more people made safer from health emergencies, and 1 billion lives improved by action on the SDGs.
Thinking about our goals like that motivates me every day. I hope it motivates you too.
They are ambitious targets. There is no point in aiming low.
But in order to achieve our mission and mandate, WHO must change. We must change.
There are several major shifts we must make in the way we work.
First, we must become far more focused on impact and outcomes, rather than processes and outputs.
We are not here just to publish reports, although reports are important.
We are not here to hold meetings, although meetings are important.
We are here to improve the world’s health.
Ultimately, we are accountable to the countries of the world, and the people of the world, for the results we deliver in terms of lives saved.
An important part of this shift will be an increased emphasis on data and measurement. In order to make progress, we must be able to measure progress.
As you have seen, I have appointed Professor Lubna Al-Ansary from Saudi Arabia as ADG for metrics and measurement, to bring a much greater focus to this area of work.
A second major shift is that we must be much more vocal and visible as a global health leader, by advocating for health at the highest political levels.
This is because achieving universal health coverage is not simply a technical challenge.
Improving global health security is not just a matter of better surveillance.
To achieve meaningful improvements in health, we must reach beyond the technical to the political.
Our technical work may be excellent, but it will sit on the shelf unless we work hard to create the demand for it at the political level.
Let me give you an example. In one country we visited, we met with the Prime Minister and explained that there were great health inequalities in his country, partly because the level of health spending was about half of the regional average.
The Prime Minister said he was willing to increase health spending, but that he didn’t want money to go to the wrong hands, or the wrong place, and asked for our advice on the best areas to make new investments.
We are now in a position to provide our technical support because we already have the political commitment from the Prime Minister.
This must be the model for how we work everywhere.
A third major shift is that we must become more operational and relevant in all 194 countries.
Often we are seen as the health organization for the poorest and most fragile countries. And of course, we are. But we are the World Health Organization. We are here for all countries, no matter how rich or poor they are.
That doesn’t mean we work the same way everywhere. Different countries will require different ways of working.
No country’s health system is perfect. There are always fault lines and room for improvement. So in all countries, we will engage in regular policy dialogue to identify gaps and solutions. And in some countries, that is all we will do.
But in addition to policy dialogue, some countries will also require strategic support to maximize the performance of their health systems.
A third group of countries will need policy dialogue, strategic support and technical assistance to strengthen the foundations of their health systems.
And in a small number of fragile, vulnerable and conflict-affected states, we will also provide operational support, to deliver services where nobody else will or can.
Some people worry that in becoming more operational we are putting less emphasis on our normative work. Not at all. In fact, we will further strengthen our normative work by making sure it is strategic and effective, and that it responds to what countries say they need.
Finally, we must redouble our efforts to put countries at the centre of everything we do. As you have heard me say many times before, changing the health of billions of people does not happen here in Geneva, or in regional centres. It happens in countries. We cannot hope to achieve our mission unless we invest significantly to equip our country offices with the people and resources they need.
Now, making all of these shifts will not happen overnight, and it will not happen by accident.
That’s why today I am delighted to launch the WHO Transformation Plan and Architecture, which will be the mechanism for making WHO the organization it needs to be to deliver on our new strategic plan. Again, another document under construction which we will need your inputs for in the weeks to come.
It started with you and your ideas. Over the past several weeks, our senior management has reviewed all the ideas that came in from across the Organization, and studied previous reform efforts to ensure we learn from past successes and failures.
We have now brought in external advisors to support the development and implementation of the transformation plan. But let me assure you that this will be a process that is driven and controlled and led by us.
In fact, I was encouraged to discover that already there is a change agents group in the HIS cluster. I met with them a couple of months ago and was very impressed with their commitment and efforts to improve what they are doing. Truly impressive.
From our meeting with them, I left inspired. It’s one sign that the Organization is ready for change. These people are just volunteers, doing their best to change WHO.
The transformation team will ensure the priorities and shifts outlined in the strategic plan are translated into practice at all three levels of the organization. Of course, the leadership at all levels takes the lead on the transformation agenda.
In the coming days, we will send a survey to all staff to establish a baseline against which we can measure progress. Please take the time to fill the survey out. The future of our organization depends on it.
The new strategic plan and transformation plan are two of the major achievements of the last four months. There have been many others.
Of course, there have also been difficulties and challenges.
We have already held a moment’s silence for Dr Fikri. I must say that even though I knew him only a short time, his death affected me very deeply.
It is an enormous tragedy for the people who loved him, and whom he loved. But it is also a devastating blow for the region, which already has so many problems.
I want to once again thank Dr Jaouad Mahjour for stepping in to this role at this extremely difficult time. And I want to once again assure you of my support.
Allow me to say a few words now about my appointment of His Excellency President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe as Goodwill Ambassador for Noncommunicable Diseases in Africa, because I know many of you have questions and concerns about this issue.
I would like to place on record that I take full responsibility for this appointment, and its consequences.
I made the appointment in good faith, believing that it may help to catalyse political commitment on noncommunicable diseases in Africa, and particularly in the SADC region.
I know that many of you were surprised and disappointed at this decision, and you expressed your concerns.
I heard you. After reflecting on the concerns you raised, as well as new information I received that contradicted WHO’s values, I decided to rescind the appointment in the best interests of the Organization. I reached out to the government of Zimbabwe to explain my decision, and the reasons for it.
I regret the fact that this news has impacted the organization negatively, and taken the focus away from the great work that you are all doing. I have learned an important lesson.
I believe strongly in building bridges, rather than digging greater chasms between people. Building a bridge doesn’t mean you agree with everything someone says or does. But it opens a channel for dialogue. One of the problems of modern politics is that we have too few bridges and too many chasms. That’s dangerous for our world.
But the cause of global health is far greater than this one incident. It would be a shame if we allowed this episode to overshadow everything we have accomplished together in the last four months, and distract us from the mission we have in front of us.
We must all move forward together. I am focused on how we can build a better WHO that will achieve our mission.
My colleagues,
I am proud of everything we have done so far, and I am excited about everything we can achieve together in the months and years ahead.
One thing is very clear to me: you are all proud to work for WHO. So am I.
You all believe in the potential of this Organization to effect real change in our world. So do I.
You are all determined to work hard to realise that change. So am I.
That’s what I have observed the last three days, and the last four months.
We have a unique mission. I am more focused than ever on working with you all to promote health, keep the world safe, and serve the vulnerable.
Please join me on that mission.
Thank you.