Speech: WHO Director-General addresses Europe’s ministers of health
Dr Margaret Chan, Director-General of the World Health Organization
Address to the Regional Committee for Europe, Sixty-second session
Malta
11 September 2012

[Editor’s Extract, Bolding]

“…The target date for reaching the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) is fast approaching. The debate about the post-2015 development agenda is in full swing. Rest assured, WHO is taking a leadership role in moving this debate through processes and procedures aimed at collecting a broad range of views. There are many political and technical processes under way. WHO is working with many partners, including other United Nations organizations.

Pursuit of the MDGs taught us many lessons. We learned the critical importance of a well-functioning and inclusive health system that offers financial protection against catastrophic health expenditures.

We learned that good aid builds self-reliance. It aims to eliminate the need for aid. It does so by channelling resources in ways that strengthen existing capacities and infrastructures, instead of circumventing, undermining, or overburdening them.

We learned the value of concentrating international efforts on a limited number of time-bound goals that resonate with the public and parliamentarians, and of course with the development community. Individual diseases benefited greatly from innovation, including new financing mechanisms and technical innovations, like new vaccines, better medicines, patient-friendly formulations and simplified point-of-care diagnostic tests.

These are some of the successes that helped drive dramatic reductions in morbidity and mortality. They have paved the way for a new agenda that builds on these achievements. And I’m happy to see our colleagues from GAVI and the Global Fund here; they are important partners.

But, as I said, we absolutely must get this right. The MDGs strongly influenced development priorities and directed resource flows. The temptation will be great to expand the number of goals, rather than keep the agenda sharp, focused, time bound and feasible. So competition is keen among sectors to get a goal on the list.

As we think about the post-2015 agenda, we must never forget that the health-related MDGs were largely an infectious disease agenda. At the start of this century, AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria were public health emergencies that warranted sharply focused efforts to stop the epidemics from expanding further and reduce the number of deaths. This happened.

Efforts to control these diseases can now address them not as emergencies, but as part of general health services. In turn, general health services can benefit broadly from the refined and simplified strategies developed to control these diseases.

As just one example, the recent WHO policy requiring diagnostic confirmation of malaria before medicines are dispensed has strengthened detection capacity for all diseases.

My advice is this. We dare not reduce the current pressure on vaccine-preventable diseases, AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria, and the neglected tropical diseases. Constant mutation and adaptation are the survival mechanisms of the microbial world.

   Complacency gives infectious diseases the perfect opportunity to return with a vengeance. I need only mention the problems we are already facing with antimicrobial resistance. The momentum to control these diseases must not stop in 2015…”

http://www.who.int/dg/speeches/2012/euro_20120911/en/index.html