Honourable Secretary-General Shirley Botchwey,
Honourable Minister Selibe Mochoboroane,
Excellencies, honourable ministers,
Dear colleagues and friends,
I thank you, Secretary-General, for inviting me to address you all today, and I congratulate you on taking office last month.
It was an honour to meet with you yesterday to discuss our partnership, and we look forward to working with you and your team to update the Memorandum of Understanding that we signed in 2022.
Under that agreement, WHO and the Commonwealth have built a strong partnership over the past few years.
We have collaborated on COVID-19, transparency of pricing for medicines, digital health, noncommunicable diseases, ageing, and most recently, on the Lancet Commission on Cancer in the Commonwealth.
I have been listening to the four presentations and was very glad to see that they are very much in line – NCDs and mental health, healthy ageing, climate change and health, and digital health.
We look forward to further strengthening and expanding our collaboration under your leadership, Secretary-General.
Every World Health Assembly is important, but this year’s is especially so. And I’m so glad the Secretary-General has already underlined the importance of the Pandemic Agreement.
As you know, Member States will consider two agenda items this week that are of huge significance to the future both of the Organization, and global health.
First, the Pandemic Agreement, which if adopted and ratified will become a landmark instrument of international law to keep the world safer from pandemics.
Many Commonwealth countries played an active role in the negotiations.
Sometimes you had different perspectives from each other, but you worked together to find common ground, and I thank you for that.
Together, you have sent a strong signal that multilateralism not only works, but is the only way to find shared solutions to shared threats.
The second major agenda item on this year’s agenda is the WHO Programme Budget for 2026-2027, including the next increase in assessed contributions.
The historic decision that Member States made in 2022 to increase assessed contributions progressively to 50% of the base budget will transform the long-term financial stability and security of the World Health Organization.
Already, the first increase has made a major difference. If it hadn’t happened, our current financial situation would have been 300 million U.S. dollars worse.
We count on your support to approve the next increase, which is vital for putting WHO on a secure and sustainable financial footing.
We are also very grateful to Commonwealth countries for the pledges you have made during the Investment Round so far. Thank you for your trust and support.
I’m pleased to note that of the 53 countries that made pledges, 19 are Commonwealth countries – although there are 56 countries in the Commonwealth, so there’s still plenty of opportunity for more of you to make pledges!
On Tuesday we will be holding a pledging event for the Investment Round, where we hope to receive additional commitments.
Ten days ago, I was in Singapore for the Philanthropy Asia Summit and was also encouraged by the commitments expressed by Asia-based philanthropies to make strategic, catalytic investments in health.
As you know, WHO is currently facing a very difficult financial situation – a salary gap of more than 500 million U.S. dollars for the next biennium.
In fact, this is a situation we saw coming some years ago.
After I began as Director-General in 2017, we identified WHO’s over-reliance on a handful of donors as a major risk.
We have been working for several years to broaden our donor base and mitigate that risk – and we have made good progress.
So although our current situation is difficult, we are using it as an opportunity to accelerate our journey towards greater financial sustainability, and to strengthen our Organization.
We don’t want to waste this crisis. We want to use it as an opportunity.
We have taken several measures to cut costs, on travel, procurement, hiring and offering early retirement.
These measures have helped us to narrow the gap. But even so, we have no choice but to reduce the size of our workforce, beginning at headquarters here in Geneva.
Last month I announced a new, streamlined structure for headquarters, which some people called lean and mean, and the regional and country offices will follow soon.
At the same time, we know that we are just one part of a much bigger picture.
Dramatic reductions in bilateral official development assistance have caused severe impacts on the health of people and communities in over 70 countries.
We see people missing life-saving treatment, increased out-of-pocket health spending, closures of health facilities, job losses for health workers, and disruptions to information systems and supply chains.
At the same time, with sharp increases in debt servicing expenditures, over three billion people now live in countries where governments spend more on debt payments than health or education.
Just as WHO’s crisis is an opportunity for us, so many countries see their crisis as an opportunity to navigate away from aid dependency towards sustainable self-reliance, based on domestic resources.
Already several countries have taken steps to revise budgets, cut costs, reallocate funds and mobilize resources.
There are several tools that countries can use to generate new sources of revenue, including taxes on tobacco and alcohol, or insurance schemes for the public and private sectors, that can help getting sustainable financing for health.
Many countries will still require significant loans from development banks at concessional rates, and at the right terms. And I hope multilateral development banks will give their support.
But it’s important that such schemes are universal, mandatory and subsidized by taxes, to avoid exacerbating inequalities.
WHO is working with affected countries to identify which measures are best for them, and to tailor those measures accordingly.
This is an area where the Commonwealth and WHO can work together to help Member States on their journey to self-reliance, in particular those facing severe disruptions, with support from donors to bridge the gap.
So we welcome the commitments you plan to adopt today to strengthen health financing;
To address critical shortages in the health and care workforce;
To increase uptake of digital health tools;
To improve access to quality-assured medicines, vaccines and other health products;
And to advance all your other commitments, including on universal health coverage, climate change, cervical cancer, noncommunicable diseases, mental health and ageing.
WHO will continue to be your partner as you take forward these commitments.
Excellencies, honourable ministers,
Let me leave you with three requests.
First, I urge you to take concrete action on your commitment to strengthen sustainable financing for health.
This means putting more money for health in government budgets and strengthening public financing systems to make sure that money is well-spent.
Second, I request your support for the adoption of the Pandemic Agreement, and for the next stage of the process, negotiating the annex.
And third, I ask you to approve the increase in assessed contributions, and to engage with the pledging event for the Investment Round on Tuesday.
Once again, my thanks to Secretary-General Botchwey and to all of you for your commitment to a healthier, safer and fairer future for the people of the Commonwealth, and the world.
And also my thanks to the Chair, the Honourable Selibe Mochoboroane.
Thank you very much.