Opening remarks of Dr Saia Ma’u Piukala, WHO Regional Director for the Western Pacific 2024 World Health Summit 2024 - Regional Meeting

To our distinguished organisers, Co-Presidents Professor Christina Mitchel and Professor Sophia Zoungas,

To our partner and host, Monash University,

To the honourable excellencies, the distinguished guests and participants from across the Region,

And to our Chair Dr Sandro and my fellow invited speakers,

I'd like to thank Dr Mandy Nicholson for welcoming us to her country and acknowledge the Traditional Owners of the land on which we meet, the Wurundjeri People of the Kulin nation, and pay my respect to Elders past and present.

It is an honour to join you at this year's World Health Summit Regional Meeting, and share a few thoughts with you at this Grand Challenges Plenary.

And what a set of grand challenges we face.

Earlier this month we celebrated World Health Day, with the theme "my health, my right".

Ensuring the right to health for all people has never been more important, as our world grapples with multiple crises - from diseases to disasters, conflicts and climate change.

While this Region has made significant gains in reducing infant, childhood and maternal mortality, and life expectancies have become longer - but in the post pandemic period we are seeing declines in many vital health statistics.

And in too many parts of this Region, there are two types of health care systems - one for the rich and one for the poor.

Two out of every five people living in the Western Pacific still can't get essential health services. That is a staggering 782 million out of the 1.9 billion people in the Region that are struggling to find the basic care they need.

These are the problems of today, but if we cannot find a way to get them right, they will also be our fate of tomorrow.

It feels big. It feels overwhelming. It can feel like the challenges are insurmountable.

Sometimes, the scale of the challenges can make us think that the problem is out there. Beyond our grasp. Beyond our ability to act. We can hear this way of thinking in our language: we can only react and 'mitigate.' 'Shape.' 'Encourage.'

Let me suggest that the very words we use reflect a shrinking of our imagination in the face of such grand challenges. It reflects a caution, in what we dare to deliver, by ourselves and with each other.

In the face of such challenges, what will it take to 'create,' to 'ensure' and to 'sustain' good health?

The organisers of today's session rightly identify solidarity as one key to the solution. Identifying common ground. Standing together.

Solidarity is important. It is a core value in our Region.

But I also want to look beyond solidarity. Because solidarity is only possible as a result of respect. And of mutual trust. These only come with a true knowing of one another.

At their core, solidarity, respect and trust are deeply rooted in community.

Ladies and gentlemen, good health is more than the topic of discussion among experts. It is more than the words written into a policy. It is more than the ideas captured in grand programs designed in capitals far away.

Good health is the living product of our social fabric. Good health is the living reflection of the cultures, traditions and values we hold dear.

Let me not be misunderstood. There is a time and place for grand visions and global movements.

But the playing board is tilted. Money, time and resources go to fund global priorities that are too often far removed from the realities of local communities.

In 2024, it is long past time to zoom in, to hyper focus, on our communities and with a country-first and community-first strategy that is more than a slogan.

In the past three months, I have been traveling throughout our region, following my appointment as WHO's new Regional Director for the Western Pacific. I have seen and heard the passion and dedication of so many of you and our partners to making our region the healthiest and the safest.

And our priorities are as clear as they are shared:

First, promote an integrated approach to health systems development, which uses primary health care to achieve Universal Health Coverage. That is how we will address the leading causes of disease and the inequities I have described, and ensure people live not just longer, but healthier, lives.

Second, accelerate action on climate change and health. This is a threat that affects us all. In this region, we all know the profound impacts that climate change will have on health - from the impacts of air pollution on the lungs of our children, to the spread of mosquitoes to areas where we thought malaria was long gone.

But the rest of the world has not yet fully arrived at this understanding. And our future depends on us being able to bring others from outside of the health sector along on this journey.

Our third priority is to build on the lessons of the last pandemic before the next one arrives on our shores. Ladies and gentlemen - I don't need to tell you how important it is we get this right. We have an obligation to all those we lost to do so. And right now, we have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to expand equitable access, improve coordination and prevent loss of life and livelihood, through the negotiations on a new pandemic agreement.

These are our priorities. But to achieve these goals, we will need new ways of working.

Let me suggest to you today, that achieving these goals depends on the extent to which we listen to, and engage with, our communities. It depends on the extent to which we consider the nuances of culture and tradition. The extent to which we understand the individual as part of the whole.

What does this mean, in practical terms?

It means we promote health by advocating for policies that are grounded in a communities' culture, identity, and diversity.

We succeed by recognising the importance of peoples interaction with the environment where they live, enabling readiness and resilience to face climate change.

We strengthen the policy environment for regulation of tobacco, alcohol, and electronic nicotine delivery systems by adapting to the unique and localised policy environments and legal systems.

It means we provide better access to health services through transformative primary health care, integrated into the life of families and communities. It requires sharpened approaches to appropriate and evidenced-based disease control - approaches that are open to using a range of platforms including traditional medicine, as well as digital health technology.

We also provide better access by reinforcing a holistic understanding of health by including oral health and mental health programmes, adapted to country context, and integrating disability prevention and rehabilitation so that all people, of all ages, in all communities will have access.

And, lastly, it means we protect people from outbreaks and disasters by extending and strengthening surveillance and detection into the communities, adapting approaches for early action, and improving multisectoral policies and approaches, including OneHealth.

Ladies and gentlemen, I stand before you today as WHO's first Regional Director from the Pacific.

The magnitude of this is not lost on me, nor is the weight of the responsibility.

As I look around this room today, it is humbling to be standing amongst such giants of public health and world leaders. But it is also heartening to see people from so many corners and crevices of our vastly diverse region.

Representation matters... Each of us have so much to share and contribute. Lessons learned from as far as the steppes of Mongolia can be applied to the hard-to-reach communities in Australia. I am eager to see how the experiences of the Pacific can enrich the region.

You are no doubt familiar with the tradition, in many parts of Asia and the Pacific, in which families and communities come together to weave mats as part of our culture. Each member of the community contributes their part, and from those parts we make a whole woven mat.

In our Region we must do the same, bringing together our similarities and differences, our skills and resources and experiences, and weave our mat of health together.

This is our challenge, and our shared vision, to providing access to health services, and promoting, providing and protecting health in our Region over the next five years and beyond.

And, as you take part in the rich list of sessions over the next several days, I'd like to issue a set of challenges of my own to you, for you to consider:

To what extent are we rooting our analysis of the problems, or identification of solutions, in the voices of the people most affected?

To what extent are we relentlessly adapting approaches for local context, culture, or tradition?

To what extent are we capturing local innovations? To what extent are we even there to observe them?

And, finally, are we measuring impact at the local level, disaggregating and analysing impact in community and interrogating the numbers for what it means in gaps, or uneven results in people served, number of lives saved, protected, or extended?

I ask you to keep these questions in mind over the coming days, and bring strands of your own insights and experiences to the discussion, weaving a rich mat of diversity, cultures and identity to the meeting and its outcomes.

I wish you all a very successful meeting and I thank you.