| James Kon |
DATO Seri Setia Dr Awang Haji Zulkarnain bin Haji Hanafi, the Minister of Health and Chairman of the 13th Asean Health Ministers Meeting (AHMM) and related meetings yesterday called for zero complacency in addressing emerging challenges in the regional bloc’s health sector, despite progress made by the Asean Community in areas of communicable disease such as polio, measles, malaria, HIV and AIDS.
The 13th AHMM and related meetings are currently being hosted by Brunei’s Ministry of Health from September 3 to 7, at the International Convention Centre. The 13th AHMM was preceded by the preparatory senior official meeting held on September 3, which included Asean Plus Three (APT) and Asean-China.
In his remarks at the opening of the 13th AHMM, Dato Seri Setia Dr Awang Haji Zulkarnain also outlined a number of challenges faced by the regional bloc.
He said, “Some of us have started to face the challenge of aging populations. All of us face the challenges of increasing rates of non-communicable diseases and the need to meet the ever greater demand for healthcare sustainably, when financial resources are stretched and the funding pool becomes more limited.”
Confronted by the stated challenges, he said, “Some may say that Asean Health Ministers now face our own ‘Mission Impossible’. However, just as the challenges of building one community 50 years ago were met by our leaders, we too will face emerging challenges with perseverance, partnership and collective action.”
As a group, he said, “We have been taking stock of our progress and through the Post-2015 Health Development Agenda; we have identified a way forward for us to meet the new challenges. In 2014 in Vietnam, we endorsed the Asean Post-2015 Health Development Agenda together with the four health clusters, namely Promoting a Healthy Lifestyle; Responding to All Hazards and Emerging Threats; Strengthening Health Systems and Access to Care; and Ensuring Food Safety. Since then, the clusters have developed and are now implementing their work programmes.”
The minister also reminded that, “We must not forget that diseases are not a simple physical condition of ill-health. For our work to be effective, we must look beyond the immediate determinants of disease towards the social, economic and environmental determinants of health and wellbeing.
“We have to dig deep and focus not just on the causes but the causes of the causes. The starting point is to realise that population health is the outcome of policy choices. The biggest problems we face such as non-communicable diseases, the health impacts of climate change and the management of severe outbreaks are not amenable to technical solutions alone. They require action across sectors, engaging our societies and greater solidarity among countries.”
Also present at the meeting were Vongthep Arthakaivalvatee, the Deputy Secretary General of the Asean Secretariat; Dr Takeshi Kasai, the World Health Organization (WHO) Director of Programme Management in the Western Pacific region, as well as ministers and heads of delega-tions from Asean member countries.
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