WHO/A. Esquillon
The World Health Organization (WHO) Regional Committee for the Western Pacific, WHO's governing body in the Western Pacific, opened its sixty-sixth session today in Guam. The annual meeting brings together representatives from the Region's 37 countries and areas to decide on significant health issues that affect the health and well-being of the Region's 1.8 billion people.
The Regional Committee will also set policies and approve work programmes and budgets of WHO as well as review WHO's work over the past year.
Items to be discussed include:
- viral hepatitis and the need to go beyond immunization and expand efforts to save people from a life of suffering; as hundreds of millions of people across the Region continue to live with chronic hepatitis infection and the risk of cirrhosis and liver cancer; as well as the need to reduce the cost of new effective drugs to treat those afflicted by viral hepatitis;
- implementing the End TB Strategy in the Western Pacific; and the need for new approaches to fight TB, especially among high-risk groups such as migrant populations; eliminate catastrophic household costs associated with tuberculosis and prioritize the response to drug-resistant TB;
- the importance of universal health coverage in national health policies and strategies, and overcoming the challenges posed by the need for sustainable financing, urbanization and migration, climate change and emerging diseases;
- preventing violence and injuries in the Region, which claim more lives than the combined total from diabetes, diarrhoeal diseases, HIV/AIDS, malaria, respiratory infections and tuberculosis;
- addressing health challenges caused by rapid and unplanned urbanization; and
- progress reports on food safety, Asia Pacific Strategy for Emerging Diseases (2010) and the International Health Regulations (2005), neglected tropical diseases and leprosy, ageing and health, noncommunicable disease prevention and control and regulatory systems strengthening.
In his opening address to the Regional Committee, Dr Shin Young-soo, WHO Regional Director for the Western Pacific thanked the Government and the people of Guam and the United States of America for hosting the sixty-sixth session of the Regional Committee. "It is a good year for us to meet in the Pacific—on the 20th birthday of the Healthy Islands vision," said Dr Shin.
Dr Shin noted that Pacific health ministers reaffirmed their commitment to this vision earlier this year at their meeting in Fiji. They pledged to address the Pacific's noncommunicable disease crisis and monitor progress towards creating a truly healthy environment.
"Since the first meeting of ministers in 1995, Pacific islands have made impressive strides in health. Child survival rates have improved. Life expectancy has risen by nearly five years," said Dr Shin. He added that "during the same time, deaths caused by tuberculosis have been reduced by two thirds, as the Pacific remained polio free and made progress against other neglected tropical diseases."
Dr Shin also noted how the past year has been a busy one for public health in the Region and globally, noting the Ebola virus disease (EVD) outbreak in West Africa. "Although we did not have a single case in the Western Pacific Region, we still played a key role in helping to manage the outbreak," said Dr Shin. "We initiated a team approach called the Western Pacific Regional Ebola Support Team—known as WEST—to support the global response on the ground."
Dr Shin also mentioned Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) outbreak, which, together with the EVD outbreak, "serve as painful reminders that pathogens can travel rapidly across borders and that outbreaks can occur in the most unexpected places." He said that EVD took everyone by surprise, while the MERS outbreak in the Republic of Korea showed that vulnerability is universal. "Even a sophisticated health system with high capacity can be caught off guard when an infectious disease strikes," said Dr Shin.
As such, Dr Shin reminded everyone to "focus on the importance of working across sectors, across borders and across societies—bridging gaps in information and understanding with solid collaboration. No one organization or person can do it alone. But working together, we have shown that we can make real improvements in the health and well-being of the Region's 1.8 billion people."
In his speech, Eddie Baza Calvo, Governor of Guam, said "It is an honour to host the members of the WHO Western Pacific Region for the sixty-sixth Regional Committee Session here on Guam. Guam is proud to welcome the more than 300 people representing 37
countries."
Governor Calvo added, "Whether it is a sedentary lifestyle that leads to obesity and the growing number of non-communicable diseases, or the multiplied opportunities for communicable diseases to spread, or the growing disparity in wealth
that leads to a population of our countrymen without access to healthcare, or education and other opportunities—I hope that this year's Regional Conference will help provide an answer to these issues that we cannot ignore in our ever-shrinking
world."
Dr Hans Troedsson, WHO Assistant Director-General for General Management, spoke on behalf of WHO Director-General Dr Margaret Chan. He mentioned newer threats to health that have gained prominence. "Like other problems that cloud humanity's prospects for a sustainable future, these newer threats to health are much bigger and more complex than the problems that dominated the health agenda 15 years ago," said Dr Troedsson. Some of these new threats include:
- Noncommunicable diseases have overtaken infectious diseases as the world's biggest killers. In some Pacific island countries and areas, more than 75% of adults are obese, nearly 50% of young people smoke, and up to 40% of adults have elevated blood-glucose levels.
- The world is ill-prepared to cope. Few health systems were built to manage chronic if not life-long conditions. Even fewer doctors were trained to prevent them. And even fewer governments can afford to treat them.
- The climate is changing, with consequences to health ranging from a wider geographical distribution of dengue to excess deaths from air pollution, heat waves, and other extreme weather events. Pacific islands are already recording acute consequences that threaten their very survival.
- Antimicrobial resistance is now regarded as a major health and medical crisis. Highly resistant superbugs haunt emergency rooms and intensive care units around the world. Gonorrhoea is now resistant to multiple classes of drugs. Even with the best of care, only around half of all patients with multidrug-resistant tuberculosis can be cured.
- As sharply illustrated by malaria, tuberculosis and bacteria carrying the NDM-1 enzyme, drug-resistant pathogens are notorious globe-trotters. They travel well in infected air passengers and through global trade in food.
Dr Troedsson also spoke about the Ebola outbreak in West Africa. "It is not yet over, but we are very close. Dr Chan thanks the Western Pacific Region Ebola Support Team, or WEST, for contributing to the international response that has brought us so far," he said.