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Secretary-General's Forum on
Advancing Global Health in the Face of Crisis

New York, 15 June 2009

Recognising that the need to secure health is a foundation for prosperity, stability and poverty reduction, the Secretary-General of the United Nations has made global health a priority for his tenure and has decided to undertake joint efforts to raise the political attention and help build support for action on global health. There are major challenges at hand, which have been made more acute by the multiple crises facing us. The United Nations must join forces with Member States, civil society, the private sector, philanthropists and many others who have shown great resolve to make the breakthroughs in health so urgently needed.

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Health is fundamental to development, peace and security, and human rights. Funding and political attention to the health sector have increased rapidly in recent years, and so has the number of actors in the global health arena. Rapid technological advances and significant gains have been made in certain areas. However, efforts to ensure coordination and accountability of health interventions have lagged behind the surge in players and resources. The current economic crisis, as well as the food crisis and climate change, cast a long shadow on future progress, particularly on the most vulnerable populations. The recent H1N1 influenza outbreak is yet another reminder that health threats in one country is a threat to all, requiring a collective, global response. We must move towards multi-stakeholder strategic partnerships to maximise the impact of global health interventions on the ground, and at the local level in particular.

Previous General Assembly sessions have looked into today's health challenges through the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) thematic debates held during the 61 st and 62 nd sessions of the General Assembly and the HIV/AIDS special sessions. The momentum is ripe to dedicate exclusive and comprehensive attention to health issues, including how best to ensure effective action through enhanced coordination and coherence. The Secretary-General and the UN system, as well as Member States, civil society and the private sector will be called upon to work in intense coordination to achieve concrete results.

Secretary-General's Forum

To discuss the way forward, the Secretary-General will convene a forum on 15 June 2009 on Advancing Global Health in the Face of Crisis to elevate the global health debate and engage multi-sectoral representatives from around the world. Progress on the health front requires the engagement of actors beyond health ministries alone.

The forum will draw attention to the need for effective stewardship of global resources and enhanced coordinated action to meet the needs of the most vulnerable populations, providing an opportunity for different stakeholders to present how they intend to make a difference and forge new partnerships.

The event will begin with an opening session by the Secretary-General and the Director-General of WHO. This event will see the participation of Member States, UN agencies, representatives from philanthropy, the private sector, and civil society, including organizations representing the community level.

Three interactive panel discussions will explore the following issues and how best to coordinate efforts for progress:

1. Protecting vulnerable populations – focusing on the following issues:
   
   
   • The health MDGs, especially maternal and newborn health – to push for accelerated progress, particularly on MDG 5 aimed at reducing maternal mortality, which remains the Goal that lags furthest behind.
     
     
   • Diseases that disproportionately affect the world's poor, such as neglected tropical diseases, and non-communicable diseases – to enhance awareness and mobilise action to prevent, treat and control these diseases, which hit the most vulnerable hardest, contribute to perpetrate poverty and, in the case of non-communicable diseases, are rising as chief causes of mortality.
     
     
2. Building resilient health systems : strengthening delivery from global to local – to showcase successful experiences in ensuring service delivery from the global level to the local, and how to overcome the financial barriers that exclude the poor and exacerbate their poverty when seeking treatment and care.
   
   
3. Enhancing coordination and coherence: toward multi-stakeholder strategic partnerships – to bring together Member State initiatives and the work of international organizations, civil society and the private sector to maximise the impacts of global health interventions.

A luncheon will be co-hosted by the Secretary-General, the Foreign Minister of Norway and the world' s leading general medical journal, The Lancet, on the occasion of the launch of the 2009 Report of the Global Campaign for the Health Millennium Development Goals.

The outcome of the event will be a chair's summary highlighting concrete ways forward on each of the issues raised in the course of the day.