Africa-Press – Lesotho. The Minister of Health Hon. Semano Sekatle has attended the 34th edition of the CommonwealthHealth Ministers’ Meeting (CHMM) in Geneva, Switzerland together with his team.
The meeting, which is basically on the post-Covid-19 health agenda, also serves as a guidance for governments to build sustainable and resilient health systems that can withstand future crises and advance Universal Health Coverage (UHC) goals towards global health security.
His team includes the Director General Dr.
Nyane Letsie, the Principal Secretary (PS) Khothatso Tšooana and the Public Relation Manager ‘Mamolise Falatsa. According to Falatsa, the minister will not only attend that CHMM but other meetings like the United Nations Health Assembly, the World Health Assembly (WHA) and the National Health Assembly (NHA) as well. She said the minister and his team are set to make their return on June 2.
The meeting convened under the theme: ‘The Road to COVID-19 Recovery: Lessons Learnt for Building Health System Resilience to advance UHC and Global Health Security in the Commonwealth’. It is a forum for ministers to assess the current health challenges in the Commonwealth and discuss effective solutions and strategies, as the world recovers from the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Speaking at the opening on Tuesday, the Secretary-General of the Commonwealth, the Rt Hon Patricia Scotland QC, said the pandemic continues to be a profound crisis in the world. But as well as being a distinctive threat, he said COVID-19 has exposed the inherent weaknesses and inequities in the health systems – as a Commonwealth, and as a global community.
He underscored that even the countries with the most advanced health systems have been forced to grapple with severe disruption to essential services and primary health care. For many low and middle-income countries, he said these disruptions were magnified, and progressed toward pre-pandemic commitments on urgent priorities such as malaria and neglected tropical diseases that have been inhibited, this is according to the commonwealth press
release dated May 17. It further noted that the meeting also saw the launch of the 2022 Commonwealth Malaria Report, which will be deliberated by ministers in the run-up to the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) and the Kigali Summit on Malaria and Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs). “The new report provides a snapshot of the challenges and progress being made to meet malaria targets across the Commonwealth and important insights into the trends in malaria interventions.”
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