President of the Republic, Chairperson of the AU, attends the Opening of the 77th Session of the World Health Assembly in Geneva

His Excellency, the President of the Republic and Chairperson of the African Union, Mr. Mohamed Ould Cheikh EL Ghazouani, participated Monday morning in Geneva (Switzerland), in the work of the 77th session of the World Health Assembly, organized at its current session under the theme “Everyone for health, health for all”, as a special guest and representative of the Organization of the African Union.
In his speech on the occasion, His Excellency thanked Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO), for inviting His Excellency to address the high-level opening ceremony of this session, praising in the same context the achievements of the Organization globally, and the African continent in particular, despite the great challenges it faces, including lack of funding.
His Excellency stressed that despite what has been achieved to promote universal health care, there is still a long way to go towards achieving the goals of the 2030 Agenda, adding that half of the population of the African continent, or approximately 672 million people, do not always get the health care they need, considering that this unacceptable situation is mainly related to poor health infrastructure, lack of qualified health personnel, insufficient access to vaccines, medicines and high-quality medical products, and more generally. Inefficient local health systems.
His Excellency pointed out that the COVID-19 pandemic has revealed the weak resilience of these health systems, as well as the collective inability to create a coordinated and effective global response to pandemics, noting that one of the main challenges during this pandemic is vaccines and equity in their access to patients, stressing the importance of strengthening the capacity of the African continent in the production of vaccines and medicines.
In his speech, His Excellency also stressed that the African Union is firmly committed to continuing and deepening fruitful cooperation with the World Health Organization, so that everyone in Africa and elsewhere can also access quality and affordable health care.
In addition to His Excellency, the Prime Minister of Switzerland Viola Amherd, the Prime Minister of Malaysia Dr. Anwar Ibrahim, the Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Thailand, the Secretary-General of the United Nations Antonio Gutteres and the President of the European Union were among the most prominent speakers at the opening session.

Director-General of the World Health Organization and President of the International Olympic Committee.
The agenda of this session is to follow up and evaluate the three billion goals of the World Health Organization, which are to seek to achieve universal health coverage for one billion new people, better protect one billion new people from health emergencies, and make one billion new people more access to health care.