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The United Nations General Assembly will hold three high-level meetings on health this year on key concerns, including pandemic preparedness, Universal Health Coverage and ending the TB epidemic by 2030.
"All three are among the eight flagship priority programmes that the WHO South-East Asia Region had identified in 2014 in discussion with Member countries," World Health Organisation's Regional Director for South-East Asia Poonam Khetrapal Singh said in a statement on Thursday. However, the first high-level meeting on pandemic preparedness is an "opportunity for world leaders to forge a common path forward to prevent a repeat of the devastation wrought by the COVID-19 pandemic," the statement said Universal Health Coverage stands necessary as COVID-19 demonstrated that the health and well-being of all people is the foundation of prosperous, equitable and sustainable societies and economies, it said. According to Singh, "We need to focus on accelerating efforts to ensure that everyone, everywhere receives good quality health services, when and where needed, without incurring financial hardship." Lastly, the third health issue is to identify gaps and solutions to "accelerate progress towards ending the Tuberculosis epidemic by 2030 and ensure equitable access to prevention, testing, treatment, and care," the statement said. Moreover, it is relevant to the WHO Southeast Asia Region in view of its disproportionate burden of TB cases and deaths. These programmes are receiving focused attention and action. "Much has been done. Much more is needed," the statement added. Meanwhile, new solutions are needed for the countries to deliver health for all to make progress on their wide agenda for sustainable development. "The COVID-19 pandemic has shown that global actors in the multilateral system, working differently and collaborating more robustly, can achieve ambitious goals and establish a pivot point for global health," she said. Furthermore, these high-level meetings are opportunities to commit to these key priorities, to collaborate, to explore innovative ways of overcoming challenges and to provide an impetus to the existing efforts, she added. (ANI)
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