Anjali Sharma
GG News Bureau
UNITED NATIONS, 21st Sept. UN on Wednesday has reported that some 4.5 billion people, more than half the global population, do not have enough access to essential health services.
World leaders at the high level session of the UNGA in New York discussed the issue of health services worldwide which is lacking to achieve as one of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and its 17 Goals.
They are looking for a fresh global strategy to prevent, prepare, and respond to future pandemics on the heels of hard lessons learned from the COVID-19 outbreak in 2020. International agreements are in the pipeline to tackle the global tuberculosis epidemic and to promote universal health coverage for all.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said “We live in a world of many competing priorities, but we need to keep the attention of world leaders on health as the foundation of sustainable development.”
The UN health agency was forging innovative ways to handle global outbreaks of deadly diseases and viruses even long before the COVID-19 pandemic shut down the world.
WHO was discussing an international strategy, now a new pandemic accord is before the world at UNGA 78.
The global community across the planet painfully learned, no country was immune to the deadly, fast-spreading virus that pushed healthcare systems to their limits, killed more than 6 million people, and set back development gains by decades.
The plan is to make the world safer by guarding global disease outbreaks and cementing efficient response plans for current and future generations.
World leaders have been negotiating a draft declaration that world leaders are expected to adopt at a high-level meeting on 22 September.
According to Tedros, many countries with the most advanced medical care systems were caught by surprise by COVID-19 because of their historic lack of investment in primary health care.
The ministers will gather for a high-level meeting on universal health coverage on September 21 in New York.
Mr. Tedros said providing universal health coverage makes sense by weaving through a range of SDGs.
He said strong primary health care (Goal 3) requires long-term investments in health and care workers, and specifically in decent working conditions (Goal 8).
And investing in education (Goal 4) must be matched to jobs and careers, with the right salaries and incentives, he added.
He said two-thirds of the global health and care workforce are women, he emphasized that investments in the health and care workforce can also advance gender equality (Goal 5).
The draft political declaration expected to be adopted on Thursday towards one main result: a healthier population.
WHO has set up the SDG 3 Health Clinic, no appointments needed as the head of States and diplomats debate global challenges.
The Global Scrubs Choir, made up of frontline staff from the Royal Melbourne Hospital, is performing live at the WHO-run SDG 3 Health Clinic.
Visitors can have a seat on a friendship bench and tell clinic staff why mental health is important to them.
Health is not just the absence of disease or infirmity but a state of complete physical, mental, and social wellbeing.
The Global Scrubs Choir, comprising frontline staff from the Royal Melbourne Hospital in Australia, will be performing daily from 8 am until 8:45 am.
A high level dialogue on 22 September is to intensify global efforts to end a decades-long tuberculosis epidemic, which remains a significant cause of death worldwide.
The preventable and curable disease disproportionately affects developing countries, and one quarter of the world’s population is infected with the bacterium that causes the illness. In 2021, an estimated 10.6 million people fell ill with TB, and 1.6 million people died from it in 2021.
WHO declared it a global emergency 30 years ago, the epidemic still is a critical challenge in all regions and affects every country of the world.
Millions of people ill with TB are missing out on quality care each year, including on access to affordable diagnostic tests and treatment, especially in developing countries, according to the UN health agency.
WHO stressed that adopting the draft political declaration means nations would commit to a set of actions to swiftly change that.
WHO established the Global Action Plan for Healthy Lives and Wellbeing for All, known as “SDG 3 GAP”, in 2019, to bring 13 multilateral health, development, and humanitarian agencies around the world.
Despite rising challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic, they made hard-won inroads, taking their success stories to the SDG Summit in a bid to help.
The goal is to help countries speed progress on health-related SDGs.
They take joint action and provide more coordinated and aligned support to country-owned and led national plans and strategies.
Peter Sands, Executive Director of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, said “In the last few years, we have been experiencing something of a perfect storm: COVID-19, climate change, conflicts and other crises are threatening the progress achieved over the past 20 years.”
“We can sustain and even accelerate progress if we work together to tackle the most acute health challenges and build stronger and more resilient health systems, but it is vital that as we do so we confront the deep and pervasive health inequities between and within countries,” he added.
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