Excellencies, dear colleagues and friends,
My thanks and congratulations to the Africa CDC and the African Union for your vision in creating this Ministerial Executive Leadership Programme.
You have rightly recognised the fundamental importance of strong leadership for the health of Africa's people.
The needs of our continent are great, demanding great leadership to meet them.
And great leadership is nothing less than what the people of our continent deserve.
That is especially the case as we recover and rebuild from the COVID-19 pandemic, and seek to kick-start progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals.
Even before the pandemic, we were well off track for the SDGs. Now we're even further behind.
But the pandemic has only shown us why the SDGs are so important, and why we must pursue them with even more innovation, collaboration and determination.
As we seek to reinvigorate progress towards the health-related targets in the SDGs and WHO's "triple billion" targets, we have proposed five priorities on which we are urging all countries to focus. We call them the "five Ps":
Promoting, providing, protecting, powering and performing for health.
Your leadership is essential for each. Allow me to explain how.
The first priority is promoting health and preventing disease, by addressing its root causes.
We must recognise that health is not created in hospitals or clinics, but in homes, streets, schools, workplaces, markets and communities.
Much of the work that you do as Ministries of Health do is dealing with the consequences of unhealthy diets, unsafe water and sanitation, polluted environments, dangerous roads and workplaces, and the aggressive marketing of products that harm health.
Addressing these risk factors will require you as leaders to work with your counterparts across government, and in the private sector, to prevent disease and injury, and keep people healthy.
The second priority is providing health, by radically reorienting health systems towards primary health care as the foundation of universal health coverage.
More than 90% of essential health services can be delivered through primary health care, including routine vaccination, prevention and treatment for communicable and noncommunicable diseases, and services for sexual and reproductive health.
Strong primary health care can avoid or delay the need for more costly secondary and tertiary care.
Making this reorientation will require you as leaders to be innovative and ambitious, especially by investing in community health workers who can provide essential services in every village.
As the "eyes and ears" of the health system, primary health care also plays a vital role in detecting outbreaks at their earliest stages.
Which leads me to the third priority: protecting health, by strengthening preparedness, response and resilience, at the local, national, regional and global level.
As you know, there have been multiple reviews of the global response to COVID-19, with more than 300 recommendations.
Based on an analysis of those recommendations, WHO has proposed a cohesive framework for a stronger architecture for health emergency preparedness and response, with stronger governance, stronger financing, stronger systems and tools, and a stronger WHO at its centre.
In just nine days' time, WHO Member States will begin negotiations on the zero draft of a new pandemic accord.
As the continent that experiences more health emergencies than any other region, Africa has the most to gain from a strong accord, and I urge you as leaders to ensure your countries engage actively and constructively in this process.
The fourth and fifth priorities are enablers of the first three.
The fourth is powering health, by harnessing science, research, innovation, data, digital technologies and partnership.
And the fifth is performing for health, by building a stronger, more agile WHO that is better placed to support you to achieve your national priorities.
Last year's agreement by WHO Member States to increase assessed contributions to 50% of our base budget over the next decade is a milestone in the history of our organization that will transform our ability to give you the support you need.
More than ever before, we are increasing our support to our country offices.
Our next Programme Budget, for the 2024-25 biennium, is the first in which country offices will be allocated more than half of the total budget.
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We remain more committed than ever to working closely with the Africa CDC and the African Union to strengthen the continent's health systems and institutions.
Excellencies,
This year marks the 75th anniversary of the founding of WHO.
In 1948, nations came together to recognise that health is not a luxury for the rich, but a human right for all; an end in itself.
More than ever before, our continent needs strong leadership - your leadership - to realise that right.
The best leaders, the strongest leaders, do not seek power for themselves, but to empower others;
Not to push others down, but to bring them up;
Not to build their own reputations, but a legacy that endures in the leadership of those who will come after you.
As the Malawian proverb says, he or she who thinks they are leading but has no followers, is simply taking a walk.
Thank you all for your commitment to leading us towards the Africa we all want: a healthier, safer, fairer Africa.
I thank you.
