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Opening of the 66th World Health Assembly
At the Palais des Nations, Alain Berset delivers the opening speech on behalf of the host country. The theme of the year: the place of health in the sustainable development agenda after 2015. “Sustainability” yields more than 100 million results online, both gratifying and worrying: the word risks becoming an empty formula. Health, he says, is at once a precondition, an indicator and an outcome of sustainable development.
He holds talks with the health ministers of India, Ghulam Nabi Azad, and of Lithuania, Vytenis Povilas Andriukaitis. The Chinese minister Li Bin invites him to China; he accepts for August. He also brings together UNICEF, UNDP, UNAIDS, the Global Fund and the WHO on the role of International Geneva.
In the evening, with Margaret Chan and Zsuzsanna Jakab, he signs the first cooperation strategy between the WHO and Switzerland: non-communicable diseases, health workforce, WHO reform, SDC priority countries, International Geneva. Switzerland is the first industrialised country to formalise its cooperation with the WHO in this way.
Speeches on this site
- Ouverture de la 66e Assemblée mondiale de la Santé (French-language page)
Sources