Your Excellency President Uhuru Kenyatta,
Excellencies, dear colleagues and friends,It is a pleasure and an honour to be here for the launch of the WHO Health Emergency Hub, and the new Centre of Excellence for workforce training.
This effort builds on a long history of partnership between Kenya and WHO, and of course between Kenya and the UN. DG Zainab Bangura was telling me about all of the support that the United Nations was getting in Kenya.
I would like to appreciate His Excellency for his support, not only to WHO but to the whole UN family.
President Kenyatta, I would like to express my gratitude and my admiration for your leadership and vision in support of WHO, and for sponsoring this Hub, which will help build a stronger, and more resilient Africa.
I would also like to use this opportunity to thank the Cabinet Secretary, the Honourable Mutahi Kagwe, and the Director-General, Patrick Amoth, and the whole of your team for all of your support to realize this vision.
I also want to commend WHO Regional Director for Africa, my sister, Dr Tshidi Moeti and her team for their foresight and commitment in taking the Hub and this vital centre of excellence forward.
The African region experiences over 100 health emergencies per year, more than any other region in the world, including outbreaks of cholera, yellow fever, meningitis, measles, and Ebola as well as humanitarian disasters such as the current hunger crisis in the Horn of Africa and the Sahel region.
The frequency of these events is expected to increase, sadly.
Public health emergencies in the region often prove overwhelming for already weakened health systems and lead to interruptions in the delivery of essential health services and disrupt societies and economies.
But it does not have to be this way. Many of these are preventable or controllable with proven public health interventions.
We have significant gaps in preparedness that we must address, particularly in terms of the training and building up of an emergency workforce.
A WHO analysis found that less than 10% of countries in the African region have the workforce required to prepare, detect and respond to public health risks.
That is why WHO and the Government of Kenya have come together to build the Regional Emergency Hub and the Centre of Excellence on health workforce training which we believe can make a difference in the continent.
The Government of Kenya has generously committed 12.14 hectares of land, and US$ five million towards construction.
The Government of Kenya is also generously providing WHO with office space, which can accommodate 120 staff for a three-year period while the Hub is being built. So, the work has already begun. We cannot wait until construction is completed. And that’s why the three-year office space can help us to start supporting countries in our continent.
The office is nearby, at the Kenyatta University Research and Referral Hospital.
The new Hub will bolster resilience and health security in Kenya, in the region and across the continent.
From the Hub we will be able to coordinate emergency response for the eastern Africa region and organize the delivery of life-saving medical supplies to where they are needed the most in the whole continent.
The Hub will also be used to stockpile medical supplies and equipment, which will improve effectiveness and allow resources to be deployed to the field more quickly.
While the physical building for the new Hub is still being constructed, our teams are already at work.
We are working to support medical relief efforts around the greater Horn of Africa hunger crisis, providing supplies and coordinating health assistance efforts for more than 80 million people in seven countries.
WHO has scaled up operations to support countries in the Horn of Africa facing compound challenges:
acute food insecurity;
conflict;
the worst drought in 40 years;
devastating flooding;
the impact of climate change;
and rising international food and fuel prices;
all in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Beyond the eastern region, the Nairobi Emergency Hub will serve all 54 African nations across the continent, working in collaboration with both the WHO African and Eastern Mediterranean Regional Offices.
Currently, it takes an average of 20 days to deliver supplies to communities across Africa during emergencies.
Prepositioning supplies at the Emergency Hub is part of WHO’s effort to significantly cut down delivery time to 72 hours.
The Hub can also be used by other UN agencies to provide training in areas related to emergency and humanitarian crisis management, including conflict management, food security, logistics, and recovery.
Finally, the Emergency Hub will be fundamental to WHO AFRO’s flagship programme to strengthen health security, being rolled out with the African Centres for Disease Control and other partners.
The flagship programme aims to better protect Africans from health emergencies by the end of 2025.
The Hub will improve the capacity of African countries to prepare, detect and respond to health emergencies, improve logistics capacity, and strengthen health security both regionally and globally.
WHO will contribute its share of fund for the implementation and running costs of this regional flagship initiative.
The centre of excellence will enhance Africa’s resilience to emergencies by building workforce capacity.
The Centre of Excellence for the Health Workforce in collaboration with WHO Academy will include an emergency simulation village and train frontline responders on topics such as infectious diseases and emergency camp management.
I’m glad to see the Kenyan Government and other countries in the region taking concrete steps like the Hub.
This will help to implement the ten proposals to build a safer world outlined in the Global Architecture for Health Emergency Preparedness, Response and Resilience that I presented during the last World Health Assembly.
We were honoured that Your Excellency President Kenyatta attended the World Health Assembly.
I am deeply grateful to President Kenyatta and the Government of Kenya for their leadership, generosity and vision in supporting the Emergency Hub, for the people of Kenya, and for our Africa.
Asante sana. Thank you so much.