WHO lauds Bangladesh for successfully hosting regional meeting

The WHO regional director has lauded Bangladesh for successfully hosting its annual meeting that ended on Friday adopting resolutions on key health issues.

“This is one of the most successful regional committee meetings we ever had,” Poonam Khetrapal Singh told journalists after the conclusion of the gatherings of the health ministers of eleven countries and experts.

Before meeting the press, at a concluded session, she said Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina came to the meeting “on a record three occasions”.

“It was an honour for us. We used to have prime minister just in the inauguration,” she said.

Hasina inaugurated the 32nd health ministers’ meeting and 67th session of the WHO’s Regional Committee for South East Asia Region (SEARO) on Sep 9.

Bangladesh, Bhutan, North Korea, India, Indonesia, Maldives, Myanmar, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Timor-Leste are the members of the SEARO.

Hasina attended the awards ceremony of her daughter Saima Wazed Hossain on Sep 10 who received the WHO Excellence Award for Public Health.

On Sep 11, she was the chief guest of a sidelines event on autism where Bangladesh put forward a proposal on global partnership for autism. The proposal received worldwide support.

Regional director Singh said the Dhaka gathering was different than other regional meetings in that it was for the first time that an annual meeting hosted events on the sidelines.

She once again extolled the prime minister’s daughter, better known by her nickname Putul, for her “path-breaking” effort to “put autism on the UN agency’s map”.

It was Singh’s first regional committee meeting after she took office seven months ago. An Indian national, Singh is the first woman elected to the post.

Her vision is to partner all “in eliminating gross health inequalities and enhancing human welfare”.

The Regional Committee which is the constitutional body of the WHO discussed issues like traditional medicine, viral hepatitis, civil registration and vital statistics, ways of reducing harmful use of alcohol, and health workforce education and training in this region during the meetings.

The health ministers endorsed those as resolutions to accelerate actions.

The ministers also waged a battle against vector-borne diseases like malaria, kala-azar, dengue, by issuing a ‘Dhaka Declaration’ on Sep 9.

Bangladesh signed one MoU with India on traditional medicines and homeopathy and another with Maldives for exporting drugs and exchange of doctors.

It also joined a regional vow to eliminate kala-azar by 2020.

Health and Family Welfare Minister Mohammad Nasim told journalists Bangladesh proved that “we help WHO in many areas” through the hosting the meeting.

He particularly mentioned issues like development of human resources for health, infectious disease control, community clinic and on top of all, autism.

Nasim said hosting the meeting opened opportunities for “bilateral and multilateral collaboration”.

“We learnt about experiences of other regional countries that we’ll be able to utilise for improving our health system.”