Excellencies Ministers, Excellencies Ambassadors, heads of delegation, dear colleagues and friends,
Thank you for joining us today.
As you know, the second of the five priorities I outlined in my address to Member States on Monday was providing health services – by reorienting health systems towards primary health care as the foundation of universal health coverage.
At present, health spending in most countries is imbalanced towards secondary and tertiary care.
By contrast, 90% of essential health services can be delivered through primary health care, as we all know.
We estimate that investing in primary health care could increase global life expectancy by as much as 6.7 years by 2030.
Don’t get me wrong: secondary and tertiary care are very important. People will get sick and require high-quality specialist care.
But in too many countries, primary health care has been neglected.
And yet the benefits of investing in primary health care are enormous: for promoting health, preventing diseases, advancing equity, and for health security, by building more resilient health systems.
So we are calling on countries to make a radical reorientation of their health systems towards primary health care.
In recent years, we have seen important progress at the political level, with the Astana Declaration on Primary Health Care in 2018, and the political declaration on universal health coverage at the UN General Assembly the following year, 2019.
In October, the Secretariat published a position paper with proposed policy actions on building health system resilience for universal health coverage.
We are supporting countries in five key ways:
First, we have established a Special Programme on Primary Health Care that will share practical and scalable policies, along with technical support.
Second, through the UHC Partnership we have deployed health policy advisers in 115 country offices, to support implementation of primary health care strategies. And we are seeking a budget increase to radically accelerate our support in 30 countries with a low UHC index.
Third, we are integrating disease programmes into essential packages of services, as part of the re-orientation to primary health care.
Fourth, we will help to disseminate local innovations from champion primary health care countries – in particular, the use of digital technology – and help countries incorporate these innovations in their investment plans.
And fifth, we are working with partners through UHC2030 and the Global Action Plan for Healthy Lives and Well-being for All, to accelerate primary health care implementation in countries.
Supporting countries to make this reorientation will be a key focus of our work at all three levels over the next five years.
We look forward to your comments, questions, and guidance.
Thank you.