Humza Yousaf, First Minister of Scotland announced a contribution of GBP 2.5 million (USD 3.2 million) from the Government of Scotland for the Health4Life Fund during celebrations to mark 10 years of the Task Force’s establishment and called on others to support the United Nations Noncommunicable Diseases (NCD) and Mental Health Fund, led by WHO, UNDP and UNICEF.
Yousaf emphasised the shocking statistic that ‘NCDs only receive 2% of the development assistance for the health sector’ and that ‘Scotland wants to help redress that balance’. The First Minister drew attention to the fact that ‘The Fund will support collaboration led by the Global South…and will focus overdue attention upon a major global health challenge. And crucially, by promoting the leadership of the Global South, it will encourage solutions that are better adapted to those countries’ health needs and priorities.’
Connie Mutunhu from Soroptimist International Africa Federation and Jeremy Lauer from Unexia provided progress reports on fund raising for the Health4Life Fund.
The meeting was chaired by WHO and the Government of India, with both the WHO Director-General and the Union Minister of Health and Welfare and Chemicals and Fertilizers underscoring the need for ever greater action on NCDs and mental health conditions and the important role of the Task Force.
WHO Director-General Tedros, congratulated the Task Force on what it had achieved over the last 10 years, while encouraging the Task Force and its partners ‘to be even bolder, even more innovative, and even more courageous’. Tedros emphasised the need for ever greater political and financial resources in order ‘for governments to deliver on their commitments, including through the Health4Life Fund’.
Union Minister Mansukh Mandaviya underscored the impact of NCDs across the world, that have ‘far reaching consequences for individuals, families, and communities, and posing immense pressure on health care systems’, emphasizing the importance of ‘collaborative efforts among various stakeholders’ and the role of digital health to improve the range and efficiency of NCDs prevention and control programmes.
The importance of digital solutions for NCDs and mental health conditions was a central part of the discussion. Nuria Kutnaeva, Minister of Digitalization of Kyrgyzstan, emphasised that countries ‘face the enormous task of creating cross sectoral solutions and digital platforms for government decisions and analytics based on existing systems, to bring government services closer to every citizen’ in expanding the use of digital solutions for health.
Maimunah Mohd Sharif, Executive Director of UN Habitat, added that innovation and digital solutions must be supported by strategies that also affect other areas at a social level, such as urban planning to ‘embrace the opportunity to create cities that not only provide economic opportunities, but also prioritize the health and happiness of the residents’, so to ‘build together a healthier, more sustainable, and more equitable future’.
Hani Eskandar spoke on behalf of Doreen Bogdan-Marti, the Secretary General of the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), describing some of the main critical issues related to ensuring access to digital technologies even in remote areas, such as connectivity, governance, security and human capacity issues, emphasizing that ‘ITU is very committed to continue to collaborate with public and others to help countries address those types of gaps and really promote solutions for NCDs and advance in Universal Health Coverage’.
Hans Kluge, Regional Director for WHO Europe, highlighted the need to ‘address the uneven progress in digital literacy and inclusion that leaves disadvantaged populations behind, and strengthen the monitoring and evaluation of digital health programmes and interventions to unlock their full potential’, with Ravi Bhatnagar, Director of External Affairs and Partnerships at the Reckitt Foundation, proving a clarion call for sustainable private sector engagement, with the Foundation’s commitment to ‘support the development and dissemination of digital services through the delivery platform to prevent and control NCDs’.
In the Task Force’s annual report to the Friends meeting, the Task Force Secretariat highlighted how it was responding to the call from ECOSOC Member States to scale up digital innovation. Alain Labrique, WHO’s Director for Health and Innovation, welcomed a new digital health business case that is being finalised, stating that the business case ‘is a great step towards understanding some of the costs and benefits in investing in digital health and will allow countries to develop their own advocacy tools to scale up the use of digital health solutions’.
As in recent years, the event concluded with the announcement of the winners of the 2023 Task Force awards, which this year had been organised in partnership with the WHO Department of Digital Health and the ITU.
Notes
- This year’s Friends of the Task Force meeting, Innovating to scale up technical support with and for Member States to deliver the health-related Sustainable Development Goal targets, was chaired by WHO and the Government of India, and co-sponsored by UN Habitat, the Secretariat of the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.
- The Friends of the Task Force has been an annual event at the UN General Assembly since 2016. This was the eighth meeting of the Friends. Friends meetings provide an opportunity for the Task Force, Member States and their partners to share achievements over the last year, challenges and discuss ways forward in prevention and control of NCDs, as well as in prevention and management of mental health conditions.
- This is the sixth year that the Task Force awards have been presented, with winners this year selected on the basis of multisectoral action in preventing and controlling NCDs, preventing and managing mental health conditions, and the use of digital health interventions. The names of nine winners are listed below: Ministry of Health of the Dominican Republic, Ministry of Health of Nicaragua, Ministry of Health of Lebanon, Ministry of Health of Oman, Ministry of Public Education of Costa Rica, Ministry of Youth and Sports of Tunisia, Health Finance Institute (USA), Loono, z.s., (Czech Republic), and the Forum for Protection of Consumer Rights (Nepal).
- Further details on the Health4Life Fund are available here. A press release from the Government of Scotland is available here.
- Speakers at the meeting were: Mansukh Mandaviya, Honourable Union Minister for Health & Family Welfare and Chemicals & Fertilizers, Government of India; Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General; Maimunah Mohd Sharif, Executive Director UN Habitat; Humza Yousaf, First Minister, Scotland; Nuria Kutnaeva, Minister of Digitalization, Kyrgyzstan; Hans Kluge, Regional Director, WHO Europe; Ken Ofori-Atta, Minister of Finance, Ghana; Jeremy Lauer, Professor at the University of Strathclyde, and Founder of Unexia; Hani Eskandar, ITU; Ravi Bhatnagar, Director External Affairs and Partnerships, Reckitt Foundation; Connie Mutunhu, Immediate Past President, Soroptimist International Africa Federation; Alain Labrique, Director for Health Innovation WHO; Abelard Kakunze on behalf of Jean Kaseya, Director General, Africa CDC; and Alexey Kulikov, External Relations Officer, UN Inter-Agency Task Force Secretariat.
- Marcos Espinal, Assistant Regional Director for PAHO presented the awards.
- The meeting was moderated by Svetlana Akselrod, Director of the WHO Global NCD Platform and Nick Banatvala, Head of the UN Inter-Agency Task Force Secretariat.