Your Highness Sayyid Taimoor bin Asaad bin Tariq Al-Said,
Your Excellency Deputy Prime Minister Chris Fearne,
Our hosts Ministers Al Sabti and Al Habsi,
Your Excellency Minister Kuipers,
All colleagues in the quadripartite partnership,
Excellencies, Ministers, dear colleagues and friends,
Assalamu'alaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatuh.
I thank Your Excellencies, the Ministers of Health and Agriculture of the Sultanate of Oman, for bringing us together to discuss the pressing challenge of antimicrobial resistance.
AMR is one of the most urgent and complex challenges of our time, and yet perhaps because it is not as dramatic as a pandemic, a war or a humanitarian emergency, it doesn’t attract the same attention from governments, from donors or the media.
The scale of the problem – and its consequences – cannot be ignored.
AMR is estimated to lead to five million deaths every year. It threatens health, food security, and economic development, as other speakers have said.
Just as AMR impacts multiple sectors, so too must the response be multi-sectoral.
That is why it is so important that the participants in this conference are drawn from across the health, agriculture and environment sectors, and include both the public and private sectors.
Earlier this year, the four organizations that make up the quadripartite published a Strategic Framework for collaborating across sectors to advance a One Health approach to AMR.
Despite the magnitude of this global threat, we still face significant challenges in establishing sustainable funding for the essential and effective interventions outlined in the Strategic Framework.
It is my firm hope that this meeting will pave the way towards bold - and concrete - political commitments at the 2024 UN General Assembly High Level Meeting on AMR.
I reiterate WHO’s commitment to supporting national One Health responses to AMR, which need to be underpinned by policy, technical frameworks, and sufficient institutional capacity and resources.
Thank you all once again to our hosts Oman, and to all of you for your commitment to addressing this urgent challenge.
WHO remains committed to working with all of you to protect the medicines that protect us.
I thank you. Shukran jazeelan.