Dear colleagues,
Good morning / good afternoon,
I’ve just returned from the United Arab Emirates, where I visited WHO’s logistics hub in Dubai. At the time of my visit, WHO staff were preparing supplies to be airlifted to Lebanon and Sudan.
I was impressed at how the logistics hub has significantly expanded its capacity to handle the increased demand for emergency health supplies. In the first six months of 2024 alone, the team has organized 24 charter flights to deliver supplies to 54 countries across all six WHO regions. This compares with 35 flights in the whole of 2023.
I am extremely grateful to the Government of the United Arab Emirates for facilitating WHO’s work and for supporting some of these deliveries by covering transportation costs.
Expanding our health supply chain to increase access to life-saving medicines and supplies is one of my three regional flagship initiatives. But several critical issues continue to impede our response to humanitarian emergencies in WHO’s Eastern Mediterranean Region.
The first challenge is restrictions on access for humanitarian workers and aid.
Given recent evacuation orders and ongoing hostilities in Gaza, the few health facilities and ambulances that remain functional face massive shortages in fuel and medical supplies. Yet only 16 WHO trucks have been allowed to enter the Gaza Strip in the past four weeks via the Kerem Shalom crossing, where ongoing hostilities, damaged roads, restricted access and a lack of security make the transfer of aid extremely challenging.
Meanwhile, 44 WHO trucks full of health supplies sit at a standstill in Al Arish, Egypt, and another 40 in Ismailiya, waiting to enter Gaza as soon as the Rafah border crossing reopens. To enable the massive flow of aid that is urgently needed, the immediate priority must be to reopen – and keep open – the Rafah border crossing, as well as ensure the unrestricted entry of aid through all other possible routes and crossings.
Inside the Gaza Strip, WHO staff and partners continue to meet significant obstacles en-route to health facilities. Mission convoys have been delayed, obstructed or denied movement as they attempt to deliver aid.
During my recent visit to the Gaza Strip, health and aid workers told me about the difficulties they face in trying to treat patients using very few resources – a situation that results in unnecessary deaths, infected wounds and unnecessary amputations. Just yesterday, WHO’s requests to conduct missions to resupply the Al-Ahli and Patient Friendly hospitals with health supplies were denied.
In Sudan, people living in the Darfur states, Kordofan states, Khartoum state and Al Gezira state are essentially cut off from aid. The situation in the Darfur states is particularly alarming, including in places like El Fasher, where more than 800 000 people remain unable to access food and health care.
A recent high-level mission to Chad by senior experts from WHO’s Eastern Mediterranean and African regions aimed to assess the health needs of refugees and host communities, as well as optimize and scale up cross-border operations to the conflict-affected Darfur states.
Earlier this week, as part of the cross-border operations, WHO was able to successfully deliver to North Darfur enough medical supplies to meet the health needs of 205 000 people. Additional supplies are currently moving to the Darfur states through crossline operations.
We continue to advocate for the opening of the Adre crossing between Chad and north Darfur, which would be truly life-saving. Adre is the most reliable crossing, especially during the wet season, when other routes become impassable.
The second challenge is repeated attacks on health care.
Since hostilities escalated on 7 October 2023, 1003 attacks on health care have been reported in the occupied Palestinian territory. That’s more than 1000 attacks in 277 days.
In Sudan, WHO has verified 82 attacks on health care since the start of the war on 15 April 2023. Seventeen of these attacks occurred in just the last six weeks.
As reiterated many times by WHO, protecting health care is non-negotiable under international humanitarian law. No Member State is exempt from this legal obligation.
The third issue is prevention of and response to disease outbreaks.
In the Gaza Strip, where garbage and sewage fill the streets, cases of acute respiratory infections, diarrhoeal illnesses, acute jaundice syndrome and skin infections are surging.
Cases of cholera, measles, pertussis, malaria, dengue and meningitis are reported from several states in Sudan, where 10.5 million internally displaced people have limited access to safe water, sanitation and hygiene; vector control; immunization services; and medicines.
Somalia has reported twice as many cases of cholera and acute watery diarrhoea in the first six months of 2024 as the average number of cases for the same period of the past three years. In Yemen, cholera cases has increased by 23% since this time last year.
Greater investments to control outbreaks and prevent their spread – both within countries and across borders – are crucial. Beyond the need for health and surveillance systems that remain protected and well-resourced even amid emergencies, communities must have access to safe, uninterrupted water supplies and sanitation services.
The fourth challenge is reduced funding from donors, which has a very real and tragic human cost.
The Eastern Mediterranean Region experiences many emergencies – some of which the world fails to acknowledge. One reason for this lack of attention, tragically, is the increasing number of emergencies and disasters occurring globally.
Out of sight and sometimes out of mind, millions of people in the Region continue to face a daily struggle to survive.
In Afghanistan, cuts in donor funding for WHO have led to the closure of three maternity hospitals since the start of 2024. One of the facilities, a major maternity hospital in Badakhshan province, had been providing vital gynaecological and obstetric health services to almost 50 women every day.
WHO was able to support 24 hospitals across Afghanistan in 2023. Lack of funding means we have been forced to limit our support in 2024 to just six hospitals. We have also had to drastically cut our support to primary health care; having supported 317 primary health care centres in 2023, we can only support 44 such centres in 2024.
Despite our rigorous advocacy, WHO has received no additional funding to support hospital and primary care in Afghanistan. This situation forces us to make extremely difficult choices about which services we can continue to support and which we must halt support for.
In Somalia – the most underfunded WHO health emergency in the Region in 2023 – 120 health facilities that are currently operational thanks to humanitarian funding are at risk of closure. This will leave 1.7 million people with reduced access to health services.
And in the Syrian Arab Republic, 153 health facilities are at risk of full or partial closure if current funding levels are not increased.
Dear colleagues,
To effectively address these challenges, Member States and the international community must prioritize their humanitarian obligations above all else. This includes ensuring unobstructed humanitarian access, protecting health workers and safeguarding critical health infrastructure. Now more than ever, humanitarian diplomacy is crucial to secure ceasefires, and safe passage for aid. And sufficient financial resources must be provided to realize the right to health for all.
Our collective efforts must focus on rebuilding and strengthening the resilience of communities and health systems so they are better equipped to withstand future common threats – like the next pandemic.
In line with the pandemic accord – which WHO will soon urge Member States to endorse – we must work harder to uphold these humanitarian commitments, which are based on the principles of solidarity and equity.
Our actions today will determine our ability to safeguard regional and global health tomorrow.
Thank you.
