The 152nd session of the Executive Board of the World Health Organization has concluded at the WHO Headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland. The Executive Board covered a number of important healthcare issues concerning patients worldwide, these included issues such as health emergencies, including in Ukraine, Turkiye and Syria. The earthquake at Turkiye and Syria happened during the Executive Board meeting and WHO immediately established incident management teams in the affected areas and activated its network of emergency medical teams to provide care for people who were critically injured. Moreover, a report detailing the health situation in Ukraine was also presented to the Executive Board. It was decided that the report will continue to be updated to provide “comprehensive, balanced, and validated data.”
With a high-level meeting on UHC taking place at the UN General Assembly in September 2023, the EB meeting set the stage for primary health care to be the star of the show. The necessity of a trained and capacitated health workforce continues to crystallize as a policy priority for the UHC agenda. Member States emphasized that stronger primary health care delivery and a robust health workforce were force multipliers that could jointly serve UHC and pandemic preparedness, response, and resilience goals and the Sustainable Development Goals.
The WPA supports the World Federation of Public Health Associations (WFPHA) intervention made during the session on Social Determinants of Health. Others factors beyond the medical sector play a critical role in health as determined by the interplay between health and environment. Most recently, the pandemic, alongside increasing social unrest, has exacerbated socioeconomic inequities both locally and internationally, consequently deepening health inequities, particularly amongst the most vulnerable who lack access to health services. Therefore, data on relevant patient and health service must be reported in a transparent manner so that health inequities could be monitored and evidence-based policies could be developed to improve primary care, expand universal health coverage, and better prepare for future health emergencies in a way that addresses the social determinants of health.