On 11 September 2022, ministers of health of 5 central Asian countries – Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan – gathered to endorse the Roadmap for Health and Well-being in Central Asia 2022–2025, a strategic document fostering cooperative responses to crises, including the COVID-19 pandemic, the climate crisis and political instability. The meeting was held in Tel Aviv, Israel as a side-event of the 72nd session of the WHO Regional Committee for Europe.
The Roadmap builds on the individual health goals and priorities of central Asian countries while also applying the lens of the European Programme of Work 2020–2025 – “United Action for Better Health”, embedding it in the broader
regional context. Accordingly, the Roadmap targets the root causes of ill-health in the subregion and addresses key weaknesses of central Asian countries’ health systems by attempting to heal social fractures and accelerate the countries’
delivery on global, regional and national commitments for health and well-being. It serves as a powerful health instrument that allows the countries to cooperatively respond to the intersecting crises affecting them, while remaining politically neutral.
This approach helps align national-level efforts and fosters cooperation with partners to pursue shared health policy, investment and technical objectives.
To achieve this, the Roadmap has identified 11 high-impact action areas and 32 reform initiatives, following an extensive consultative process between WHO/Europe and central Asian countries’ ministries of health, national health authorities and
development partners, applying a novel approach established by WHO/Europe to facilitate subregional cooperation for health and well-being. This approach enables countries to synergize resource mobilization and facilitate partnerships for transformative
change that will create political capital for health and broaden investment opportunities in central Asia; opportunities that focus on the most prominent, high-impact areas of shared priority for improving the health and well-being of the people of
central Asia.