Your Excellency Prime Minister Pravind Kumar Jugnauth,
Your Excellency President Taneti Maamau,
Your Excellency Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama,
The Honorable Georges Rebelo Pinto Chikoti,
Executive Director Yannick Glemarec,
Excellencies, distinguished guests, dear colleagues and friends,
Good morning, good afternoon and good evening to all representatives from Small Island Developing States. Thank you for joining us.
I would like to warmly welcome you to the SIDS Summit for Health, the first ever gathering of leaders focusing exclusively on health in Small Island Developing States.
We have a very strong representation of SIDS countries across regions, as well as civil society and youth voices. I look forward to a robust exchange.
Today is about you and the many health threats your nations face.
COVID-19 has presented a dire economic and health crisis for SIDS, while other health risks such as climate change, non-communicable diseases and malnutrition have further put your communities at risk.
Despite these serious risks, SIDS have proven to be true health leaders, safeguarding the health and well-being of your communities while at the same time catalyzing political momentum for the global health goals.
Many of you have succeeded in preventing widespread transmission of COVID-19 in your communities.
But I know the pandemic has hit you hard in other ways, such as declining revenues from tourism that is affecting your economies significantly.
The major hurdle to recovery remains equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines.
Through COVAX, we have so far been able to deliver two million vaccines to 31 Small Island Developing States, as well as other essential health products.
We know that this is nowhere near enough for your needs, and we are working hard to find ways of increasing production and equitable distribution.
We face the same problem around the world, as vaccine inequities and vaccine nationalism further deepen the divide between high and lower-income nations.
More than 77% of all vaccine doses have been administered in just ten countries.
Meanwhile, most lower-income countries still do not have enough vaccine to cover their most vulnerable and at-risk populations, let alone the rest of their populations.
WHO is working day in and day out to urgently increase the production and equitable distribution of vaccines.
In the past weeks, we have seen encouraging signs, with recent commitments from vaccine producing countries to share hundreds of millions of doses.
But that’s still not nearly enough.
We need more, and we need them to come faster.
We also need to greatly expand and invest in local production, so that the world will not be dependent upon just a few countries to produce vaccines and other essential health products.
But even once the pandemic subsides, we know that many of you will still be left facing many of the same health challenges you had before it struck.
As you know, one of the first initiatives we launched after my election as Director-General in 2017 was the Small Island Developing States Initiative on Climate Change and Health.
In 2019 I was privileged to visit several islands in the Pacific, including Fiji, Tahiti, Tuvalu, Tonga, and the Bahamas to see the impact that climate change is having on these countries.
The SIDS Summit for Health offers an opportunity to galvanize targeted support for a healthy and resilient future in Small Island Developing States.
That means strengthening financing, workforce capacity, data and evidence, and partnerships across SIDS.
And we also want to ensure that WHO support is fit-for-purpose in SIDS, which is why this Summit is so important.
Let me suggests a few key areas where WHO can offer its support.
First, we must work together for vaccine equity. That means sharing vaccines now and also investing in local and regional production.
If countries immediately share doses with COVAX and if manufacturers prioritise COVAX orders, we can vaccinate at least 10% of the population of every country by September, and at least 40% by the end of the year.
Dose sharing must happen immediately to fill an urgent supply gap: we need an additional 250 million doses by September.
Vaccine equity is the best way to control the pandemic and get your economies open and moving again.
We also need the sharing of know-how, technology and licenses, and the waiving of intellectual property rights. I hope that Small Island Developing States will support the waiver of intellectual property rights.
Second, WHO has helped small island developing states to mobilize funds for climate change adaptation, resilient health systems, food security, and emergency preparedness and response.
Yet many of your nations still lack financing to implement these policies. WHO offers our support to SIDS in better utilizing financing platforms, such as the Green Climate Fund.
Third, we can work with you to scale-up integrated services to prevent and fight NCDs, especially obesity, diabetes, hypertension, and tobacco use.
Fourth, WHO will continue to support your efforts to progress towards universal health coverage, and to strengthen primary health care workforces and data platforms.
We will also continue our existing work with you to expand pooled procurement and regulatory schemes.
Fifth, we must all learn the lessons the pandemic is teaching us.
We must do everything we can to prepare for, prevent, detect and respond rapidly to future epidemics and pandemics, based upon a foundation of universal health coverage and strong primary health care.
There is no global health security without local health security.
At the recent World Health Assembly, WHO Member States agreed to hold a Special Session of the World Health Assembly in November to consider the proposal for a Pandemic Treaty.
A treaty would foster improved sharing, trust and accountability, and help strengthen national, regional and global capacities for global health security.
We hope that such a treaty would have the support of Small Island Developing States.
All of these are ideas that come from our discussions at country level. But we want to be sure that this Summit is focused on your priorities.
I look forward to hearing your comments and suggestions.
As has been discussed, a core statement by SIDS Member States can be used to drive action as we move to the UN Food Systems Summit, to COP26 and to the Nutrition for Growth Summit later this year.
I thank you.