ITU-WHO AFRO signing ceremony regarding the development and implementation of Digital Health for Africa Joint Programme
Using Digital Health services to accelerate SDGs in the African Region
27 October 2017
Mr Brahima Sanou,
Director, ITU Telecommunication Development Bureau
Dr Matshidiso Moeti, Regional Director, World Health Organization, Africa Regional Office
Distinguished guests, colleagues,
Ladies and gentlemen,
It is a great pleasure to be here with you to sign the cooperation agreement between ITU and WHO Africa regional office and to officially launch our joint initiative on "Using Digital Health services to accelerate SDGs and Universal Health Coverage in the African Region"
Just a week ago, ITU concluded the World Telecommunication Development Conference in Buenos Aires Argentina. During the conference, we were pleased to hear a message of Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the WHO Director General.
In his message he stressed that "we need to work together, hand-in-hand, to understand how our very different worlds think and operate. We need to be speaking the same language – this is the real meaning of partnership."
I cannot agree more and I would therefore like to reiterate the commitment of the International Telecommunication Union to continue to work together with WHO to support countries in tapping into the enormous potential of ICTs to improve the delivery of affordable health care to all.
By end of 2016, 95% of the world population were living in an area that is covered by a mobile-cellular network. This is an unprecedented opportunity that we should leverage for health service delivery particularly in remote areas and for the most vulnerable strata of our societies.
It is my strong belief that with the development of ICT across all sectors, we need to move from vertical policy, regulation and operations to cross-sectoral and collaborative policy, regulation and operations.
This the reason why I initiated in 2016 an inter-ministerial roundtable as a side-event of World Health Assembly that brought together for the first time ministers of ICTs and ministers of health for a structured and cross-sectoral dialogue on the use of ICTs to improve universal health coverage.
It is with the same belief and commitment that I am here today to launch our WHO-ITU joint initiative, thanks to the visionary move of Dr. Matshidiso Moeti, Regional Director of WHO-AFRO. Thank you very much Dr. Moeti.
The initiative we are launching today will bring around the health sector in African countries various partners including telecommunication operators, ICT companies, NGOs, Academia and other development partners with the aim to strengthen public-private partnerships to increase the resilience of health systems and improve accessibility and affordability through the use of ICTs.
We will work together on building the required digital infrastructure, a capable workforce to effectively use ICTs while addressing multi-stakeholder partnership models for sustainable adoption and running of digital health.
I would like to use this opportunity to thank WHO for the collaboration with ITU on several programmes and reiterate ITU's commitment to expand our collaboration with WHO to achieve a wider impact of ICTs on Health outcomes and to accelerate the attainment of SDGs.
Let us all together make ICTs seamless part and parcel of the new and innovative tools at the disposal of health sector for service delivery and management.
I thank you.
