Remarks by WHO Regional Director for Africa, Dr Matshidiso Moeti
Thank you Madame Chair,
Thank you Excellencies, distinguished partners and colleagues, and the leadership of UNDP and the UNV programme:
I would like to express my great appreciation for the excellent work of the UN Volunteers programme. In the past years, we in WHO have benefited extensively from the skills and knowledge of over 430 UNVs in supporting our Member States to strengthen health systems and prevent and control diseases, thereby contributing to better health of populations globally. And I have to say here that we are working very hard to do better and benefit even more from the UNVs and match our sister agencies that were being quoted as having done the best.
In the African Region, since 2016, we have expanded our engagement with UN Volunteers as part of the regional and now part of the global WHO Transformation Agenda. This has resulted in more than 230 national and international UNVs serving with WHO in African countries in the past four years.
In March of this year, it was my great pleasure to launch jointly with Mr Toily Kurbanov, the Deputy Executive Coordinator of the UN Volunteers programme, the Africa Young Women Health Champions Initiative, to recruit 100 volunteers from the global south, towards empowering the African continent’s next generation of female health leaders.
I am very pleased to report that despite the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, and here I would like to commend and thank our UNV colleagues for all you are doing in supporting the response to the pandemic in Africa and in other regions. So, we already have 36 UNVs that have been recruited under this Initiative, and almost 90% of them are female. This is a great achievement, we feel, and a great start to our ambition to identify female talent in the Region and beyond, particularly in the south, linking it with our work in WHO and identify from this group of hardworking, talented people, future staff of WHO, because we are working very much also to improve gender parity in our staffing in the Organization.
These volunteers will help WHO in scaling-up health programme delivery, in supporting the continuity of essential services during the pandemic, and in reaching vulnerable groups, including women and young people. I am really excited in my interactions with them to see the excellent contribution they are already making to a range of programmes in WHO, to our COVID-19 work, to the polio eradication work, where we have recently had recognition of the achievement by the Region, in our partnership work, in immunization, and very strongly in our communications team which is helping us to get the word out about COVID-19 pandemic and other health problems.
WHO also commends UN Volunteers for its fast and effective support in the COVID-19 response. Thank you for mobilizing additional resources as well as the large number of people that you have sent around the world.
So, in closing, I would like to reiterate the immense value of the UN Volunteers programme to our work in WHO, to sustainable development in the Region, and to assure you of our continued commitment in working with UN volunteers to save lives, to promote health and to serve the vulnerable to contribute to development on the continent.
I thank you very much for the opportunity to address this meeting.