Regional Health Ministers adopt resolutions to respond to COVID-19

The Directing Council of the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) has seen Health Ministers adopting 13 resolutions to strengthen health policies to tackle urgent challenges such as the erosion of routine immunisation coverage and responding to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The four-day meeting, hosted virtually, was attended by Health Ministers and Health Authorities from throughout the Americas.

The Directing Council, which meets annually during the intervening years between the Pan American Sanitary Conference, is responsible for setting PAHO’s policies and priorities for technical cooperation, and for considering matters of public health significance.
PAHO Director Dr Carissa F Etienne noted, “You once again emphasised the need to strengthen health systems to be more resilient and responsive to public health emergencies such as this COVID-19 pandemic. I was particularly heartened that you explicitly acknowledged the need for greater investment in health systems, including the essential public health functions.”
Dr Etienne acknowledged the many challenges that have impacted national pandemic responses, including “global supply chain failures, inequities in availability and distribution of essential supplies, limited or no regional production capacity, inadequate regulatory and support systems,” all of which together deepened regional vulnerability.
She appealed for support to strengthen a policy of self-sufficiency in the region, which would enable increased national and regional production and increased access to vaccines, essential medicines, and health technology.
Dr Etienne also called for urgent efforts to boost immunisation, saying this week, “We lamented the general decline in vaccination coverage in the Americas, with increasing levels of vaccine hesitancy, all of which have been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.” She urged “genuine attention to expanding coverage, improving vaccine outreach programmes, investing in the first level of care, and addressing the issue of vaccine hesitancy.”
She welcomed commitments made by major stakeholders at the US-led Global COVID-19 Summit this week, to meet the goal of vaccinating at least 70% of all people in every country by the end of 2022.
The Council also discussed global health issues, particularly the World Health Organization’s (WHO’s) preparedness for future health emergencies, including legal and financial aspects.
Dr. Etienne stressed that much can be learned from PAHO’s decades of experience in responding to, and managing, emergencies.
“I am very confident that together, unified in the spirit of Pan American solidarity, we will vanquish this SARS-CoV-2 and be much better prepared in real terms for the next, having taken on board and to heart the lessons learned in this chapter of public health.”
Dr. Etienne said, “Our people as well as history will demand that we learn from this experience.”
The resolutions include: increasing production capacity for essential medicines and health technologies; reinvigorating immunisation as a public good for universal health strategy for building resilient health systems; and post-COVID-19 pandemic recovery to sustain and protect public health gains; a comprehensive approach for addressing health threats at the human-animal-environment interface; Roadmap for the digital transformation of the health sector in the region of the Americas.