23 June 2016

 

Thank you Chair.

I am representing Partners in Population and Development, an intergovernmental organization of 26 member countries from the global south mandated to promote South-South Cooperation in the areas of reproductive Health, family planning, gender equality and other emerging issues of the global south through knowledge sharing, capacity building, commodity & technology transfer, assisting in shaping health commodity market and strengthening of regulatory institutions.

Referring to the various reports and thoughts and summary given by the chair since morning, Presenters and Countries have mentioned it, for example – ADG Dr Bustreo mentioned yesterday on yet to find more ways to work country by country (in addition to cosponsors being worked with); need for Alignment with the Global strategy for women; recommendation highlighted several times by the Scientific Technical Advisory Group Chair to involve key influential stakeholders in capacity building and influence for country ownership and their buy in.

We take the liberty in pointing out to 2016 recommendation 10 on Strengthening HRP’s engagement with countries: a multi-pronged approach and recommendation on HRP to strengthen its work in scaling up proven innovations to improve sexual and reproductive health throughout national health systems.

From the Strategic and advocacy point of view

4 points to take home

• There is a need for more South-South Cooperation (SSC)
• All areas that have been talked about have the potential for South-South partnerships and WHO is mandated to promote SSC
• Appreciate the need for accounting of global south contributions to global health.
• Role of Generics manufacturers in ensuring access of Reproductive Health and Family Planning commodities

What can we do- maybe begin with the convening power of PPD to provide a high level global forum for policy dialogue, advocacy, peer review and bi-lateral commitments for advancing integration of population dynamics into national development plan; Advocating and generating support for strong national leadership and ownership for the improvement of adolescent’s access to sexual, reproductive health and family planning services with adequate supply of RH commodities in PPD member countries; and Mobilization of resources and mutual accountability at all levels (domestic, regional and global) to ensure affordable and accessible maternal and child healthcare services.

PPD’s board of comprising Ministers of Health, Population, Development and Social Sciences, Finance and budget in a few cases for 26 countries represent 60% of the world’s population has mandated the organization to work on access to commodities and security issues, technology transfer among others.

PPD is unique in bringing the national attention and population diplomacy at all levels- senior officials of the MoH, parliamentarians, policy makers from national research partner institutions, and all sectors within countries including implementers on the ground. This is very valuable in our opinion and PPD’s value add to the work of HRP as we have suggested earlier is linking these experts to HRP’s work and creating synergies.

It would be safe to say that the burden of the situation lies in these countries and hence the practical ways of interventions there will have the global impact.

We encourage the global architecture to be expanded beyond what Ian mentioned yesterday on working closely with the south-south partners. We believe this will go a long way in social accountability, ownership, political buy in, advocacy and greater ease in the implementation of research ‘research to action’.

To conclude, we bring to your attention PPD’s 14th International Inter-Ministerial Conference on Population and Development, which will take place from 26-30 November in Jogjakarta, Indonesia hosted by the government and national institutions, where pertinent issues around RH and Family planning and other strategic priorities. We encourage HRP to engage in the conference that will create the technical political interface to promote Implementation research and Delivery Science for the benefit of the its member countries and others.

We do want to acknowledge the presence of the PPD member countries China, India Indonesia, Thailand, Mali and Sri Lanka present in the room. China, India are the present chair and co-chair of PPD and Indonesia is the host of the 2017 Inter-Ministerial meeting.

Thank you.