Our Chair, Honourable Minister Deprez,
Honourable Ministers, Ambassadors and Heads of Delegation,
Regional Director Dr Hans Kluge, my friend,
Dear colleagues and friends,
Good morning from New York. I’m very sorry I can’t be with you in person, and thank you for adjusting the programme to enable me to join you virtually.
As you know, the UN is at a critical juncture, and this week the entire leadership of the UN is meeting here in New York to discuss the UN80 reforms, the humanitarian reset, the SDGs and changes to the UN’s efficiency, mandate and structure. That's why I could not be with you, and I had to be here. Given the circumstances, I know you understand.
WHO is giving our full support to this process, because we are part of the UN family, but also because our success depends on the success of the whole UN.
WHO is the only agency participating in each of the three clusters, focusing on the UN’s humanitarian, development and specialized agency work.
I see great promise in this agenda for advancing health, with a particular emphasis on leveraging WHO’s regional and country offices, in line with the proposals that the Secretary-General presented to the General Assembly earlier this month.
I thank Denmark for hosting WHO’s Regional Office in Europe, and I thank all Member States for the strong support you have shown for WHO in the past year.
I also thank our staff in the Regional and Country Offices, for your dedication and professionalism during what I know is a very difficult time.
Despite the many challenges we face, you have continued to support our Member States to implement the 13th and 14th General Programmes of Work, and the European Programme of Work.
And despite the many challenges we face, there are many successes to celebrate, which the Regional Director has described in his annual report.
In every single country, there are successes to celebrate, and challenges to confront.
On universal health coverage, it’s encouraging to see countries taking steps to expand service coverage, financial protection and access to medicines and immunization, while strengthening primary health care, the health workforce and quality of care.
On health emergencies, countries are strengthening their capacities, while responding to emergencies, including the war in Ukraine and in evacuating sick and injured children from Gaza.
On promoting health and well-being, there is renewed focus on communicable and noncommunicable diseases, climate change, antimicrobial resistance, and more.
And I very much appreciate the work of the Regional Office to make WHO more effective and efficient.
Of course, you also face many challenges, some new, some stubbornly persistent; some common to all regions, some unique to yours:
The steady march of antimicrobial resistance;
Sub-optimal vaccination rates;
Increasing obesity and diabetes;
The highest rate of alcohol use in the world, the slowest-declining rates of tobacco use, and the lowest rate of breastfeeding;
A projected shortage of 800 000 health workers;
High rates of violence against women and girls;
And more, are some of the challenges the region faces.
Of course, you cannot “solve” all these problems this week, but one crucial way of addressing them is by giving children the healthiest possible start to life, so I’m pleased that your agenda includes a new strategy for child and adolescent health and well-being.
Likewise, meeting the many challenges we face will require innovation in products, services and policies, so I welcome the draft strategy on harnessing innovation for public health.
And even as we focus on the health of children and adolescents, it’s also essential that we address the health needs of older people, so I’m pleased that at this meeting, you will discuss a new strategy on healthy ageing to be developed and finalized next year.
In addition, I commend to you the second European Programme of Work, which builds on the first, and complements GPW14.
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Honourable Ministers, Ambassadors, dear colleagues and friends,
At this year’s World Health Assembly, Member States sent a very powerful message that a strong and empowered WHO is what they want.
First, the approval of the next increase in assessed contributions was a major step towards WHO’s financial sustainability and independence, and to protecting it from future shocks, as envisioned when we started the finance reform in 2017.
I thank Member States for the historic decision you made in 2022 to increase assessed contributions to 50% of the base budget, and for the first two instalments you have approved, in May 2023 and in May this year, 2025. We hope you will make the remaining three instalments in 2027, 2029, 2031, and achieve the 50% target.
This is a key part of our finance reform, which is a strategic solution to the systemic problems we face, which are linked to the financing model we have.
We cannot overstate how significant this decision is, both in the current crisis, and for the long-term future of the Organization.
The increase in assessed contributions has helped us to save a large number of positions and reduce the impact of the funding cuts we have faced this year.
But it’s also a long-term strategic solution that addresses one of the Organization’s key systemic problems, and will continue delivering benefits for the next DG and beyond. Because when we crafted this, it was as a long-term programme that puts WHO on a strong footing.
The second major decision at this year’s Assembly was the adoption of the WHO Pandemic Agreement.
This was truly historic, and demonstrated that in these divided times, countries can still come together and find shared solutions to shared problems.
It’s vital that Member States conclude the negotiations to the Pathogen Access and Benefits System – the PABS Annex – in time for next year’s Assembly, so the Pandemic Agreement can be completed, ratified and enter into force as international law.
We all know that WHO is facing significant challenges, due to sudden cuts in funding.
In light of these cuts, I submitted a significantly reduced budget for the 2026–2027 biennium to this year’s World Health Assembly, which Member States approved.
Based on this revised budget, the Secretariat has been undertaking a major process of prioritization, realignment and restructuring – at headquarters and in every region, including in Europe.
We began at the top, reducing the number of senior managers and directors at headquarters almost by half.
Over the past few weeks and months, we have been through a painful process of saying goodbye to a large number of colleagues.
We have done it in a careful, systematic way, with fairness, transparency and humanity principles at the centre. So the process has been by and large a good process, and it delivered.
These are people who have served the world in many ways, including under extreme pressure during the COVID-19 pandemic, and do not deserve to be treated this way.
But we see this crisis as an opportunity to build a WHO that is more focused on its core mandate, more independent and more able to deliver for Member States and the people we all serve.
When we started the Transformation, that was also part of the objective, to avoid shocks like we are facing now and also to ensure WHO's independence by stabilizing our financing sources.
We think we can even achieve more with less, by maximizing our convening mandate.
That means leveraging and expanding our network of 800 Collaborating Centres globally, almost one third of which are in the European Region, and building new networks of partners. There are great opportunities out there everywhere in the world. The key is to work through them. We shouldn't try to do it ourselves. We can convene and do it through others. That's why I said we can do more with less. We are opening our eyes.
We plan to hold our first global meeting of all Collaborating Centres in April next year at the WHO Academy in Lyon, France, to explore how we can make best use of this powerful network of leading institutions, and even recruiting more.
Honourable Ministers, dear colleagues and friends,
Despite the challenges we face, WHO is continuing to do what Member States have mandated us to do:
We’re delivering humanitarian aid to Gaza, Sudan, Ukraine and elsewhere;
We’ve helped to stop the spread of Ebola in DRC;
We’re helping countries to deal with the impact of bilateral cuts to aid;
To catch up on immunization;
To take action on NCDs and mental health;
To monitor and respond to antimicrobial resistance;
And to eliminate neglected tropical diseases.
We’re supporting the roll out of malaria vaccines;
We’re helping to accelerate the development of a new vaccine against tuberculosis, a very promising one;
And we’re working on the availability and affordability of long-acting antiretrovirals for HIV prevention, which could be a game-changer for the epidemic.
I was very pleased yesterday to see that South Africa became the first regulator in Africa to register lenacapavir, and just the third globally after the FDA and EMA. The wide use of lenacapavir will be a game changer, and we will continue to push, with you.
But none of this is achieved by the Secretariat alone – it’s achieved in close collaboration with partners and with you, our Member States.
That close collaboration and partnership is so much more important now.
So I leave you with three requests.
First, I urge all Member States to engage actively in negotiations on the PABS annex to the Pandemic Agreement, and to conclude it in time for next year’s World Health Assembly in May.
Second, I thank those Member States that have received patients from Gaza, and I ask you to accept more patients, just as I ask more countries to open your arms.
There are still about 15 000 patients who need to be evacuated outside Gaza for treatment, including 4000 children. More than 700 have already died while awaiting medical evacuation.
And third, I urge you to seize this opportunity to work with us to build a stronger, more empowered and more independent WHO, that is better able to serve all countries.
I look forward to continuing to work with my colleagues in the Regional Office, and with all Member States as we work together to promote, provide and protect health in Europe, and everywhere.
Thank you very much.