It is an honour to be here with Your Excellency Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, and my good friends Sania Nishtar and Peter.
I thank Your Excellency, and the government of Spain, for your leadership during this critical time in the world.
And thank you for attending the replenishment of Gavi in person in Brussels last week, and for your pledges to Gavi and to WHO and the Global Fund.
A decade ago, as Foreign Minister of Ethiopia, I chaired the Third International Conference, which resulted in the Addis Ababa Action Agenda.
Those commitments boosted financing for the Sustainable Development Goals including the health SDGs, which helped saved lives and made the world a safer and more equitable place.
10 years later, we are in a different place, with serious challenges. The sudden and drastic cuts to foreign aid have disrupted health systems , with millions of people missing out on vital services and medication.
But within this crisis is also an opportunity to reshape global health financing so that it becomes more resilient and more responsive to the needs of countries.
Political leaders, through the Sevilla Commitment, have reaffirmed their commitments to increase investment in universal health coverage and inclusive, equitable, affordable, resilient and quality health systems.
The Sevilla Platform for Action is the vehicle for implementing the Sevilla commitment, starting from Day 1, through:
More and better financing for the SDGs, including through taxes and blended finance;
Tackling the debt crisis, and;
Reforming the development architecture at both national and global levels.
The initiative we are launching this morning, led by Prime Minister Sánchez and endorsed by many countries and partners, seeks to shape the global health ecosystem to deliver more sustainable, inclusive and resilient financing for health systems.
And this initiative is an opportunity for us, the global health agencies, to recommit ourselves to have an effective global health architecture. So thank you so much, Your Excellency, for bringing us all together.
WHO is already working with countries to support them through the health financing emergency and to build stronger and more resilient financing systems which are less reliant on aid and which protect the poorest from catastrophic out-of-pocket spending.
We are also working with our partners, such as the World Bank and regional development banks, to channel more concessional financing towards highly cost-effective investments in health. And we had a successful discussion yesterday with the EIB President, specially focused on the concessional financing that should be effective and in support of the Sevilla outcome.
And we are working with global health initiatives, to help ensure priority services are protected during the cuts and financing from all sources is aligned to countries' priorities, in accordance with the Lusaka Agenda principle of one plan, one budget, and one report.
This is a time of crisis, but also a time of reform. And I would like to appreciate the Prime Minister, and to congratulate him on the success on Sevilla. The success of Sevilla shows that multilateralism is alive and well.
WHO is proud to work with Spain and all of our partners to support countries to build a healthier, safer and fairer world, powered by a fit-for-purpose global health ecosystem.
I thank you.