World Health Organisations (WHO) South-East Asia Regional Office has stated that the Male' Declaration demonstrates the commitment of the South-East Asia Region's member countries to take effective and immediate action to deal with one of 21st century's most pressing issues, climate change. The statement follows endorsement of South East Asia Region of the Malé Declaration, which commits to build health systems able to anticipate, respond to, cope with, recover from and adapt to climate-related shocks and stress.
11 member states of World Health Organization (WHO) South East Asia unanimously adopted and endorsed the Male' Declaration on Thursday at the ongoing 70th session of the WHO South East Asia Regional Committee.
In a statement following the endorsement of the Male' Declaration, Regional Director of WHO South-East Asia, Dr. Poonam Khetrapal Singh stated that Climate change is happening, and is a risk to public health. Whether from greater severity and intensity of extreme weather events, changes in the spread and abundance of disease-carrying vectors such as mosquitoes, or changes to the physical environment that cause displacement or threaten livelihoods, climate change is already having an impact across the region, the Regional Director said. She noted that the Declaration demonstrates the commitment of the South-East Asia Region's member countries to take effective and immediate action.
The Declaration being adopted at the 70th Regional Committee session of the WHO South-East Asia Region builds on recent initiatives at country, regional and global levels to tackle the public health risks caused by climate change. It is accompanied by a Framework for Action to be implemented between 2017 and 2022, and calls on United Nations agencies and other international organizations, development partners, philanthropic agencies, academic and civil society organizations to mobilize human, financial and technical resources for this purpose.
The Regional Director further emphasised that building health systems resilience to climate change requires buy-in from all stakeholders. She noted that as outlined in the Declaration, core action points include establishing and strengthening climate change and health information systems and research; integrating climate risks with national disaster risk management; enhancing health sector preparedness for climate-related events, including by securing essential services such as water and sanitation, waste management and electricity; and initiating the greening of the health sector by adopting environment-friendly technologies and using energy-efficient services.
Dr. Kethrapal Singh noted that by fully implementing these and other initiatives, health systems can protect vulnerable populations across the region against health risks caused by climate change. The Regional Director emphasised WHO's support to member countries as they implement the Malé Declaration, and committed to mobilizing resources, promoting knowledge and experience-sharing mechanisms, and providing technical support to member countries at the same time as building local capacity. She affirmed WHO's commitment to presenting a progress report at the 75th session of the WHO Regional Committee for South-East Asia in 2022.
The Seventieth session of the Regional Committee is currently being held in Maldives, and includes health ministers and senior health ministry officials from member countries, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Democratic People's Republic of Korea, India, Indonesia, Maldives, Myanmar, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Timor-Leste.