Regional Workshop to Strengthen Primary Health Care in the South-East Asia Region, Bangkok, Thailand

Overview

In December 2021, responding to Member State request, WHO SEARO and Ministers of Health in the Region together launched the South-East Asia Regional Strategy for Primary Health Care, 2022 – 2030 (“SEAR PHC Strategy”) on UHC Day. Building on lessons learned during Covid-19, the SEAR PHC Strategy elaborates a set of 7 values and 12 inter-dependent strategic actions, to guide, support and monitor PHC-oriented health system transformation in the Region.  

In this regard, a Regional Workshop to Strengthen Primary Health Care in the South-East Asia Region, 28-30 November 2022, Bangkok, Thailand was held as the first PHC focused meeting since the pandemic. Over a hundred participants actively participated during the three-day workshop. The participants included Member State representatives from 9 SEA Region countries, including executive level policy makers, PHC directors, and directors at provincial and district level.  The meeting also included senior representatives from key PHC related partners active in the Region, including bilateral partners, international agencies, international financing institutions, philanthropies, implementing agencies, academic institutions, and members of civil society organizations. 

The Regional PHC workshop facilitated interaction across meeting participants, enabling knowledge exchange on operational level challenges and solutions to address key PHC-related bottlenecks. The Regional PHC workshop also saw the collective launch of the SEA Regional PHC Forum. Following further discussion, and as part of the launch of the SEAR PHC Forum, 7 thematic working groups, and associated immersion questions, were prioritized for the capture of operational and implementation-focused learning.