Speaking at the 150th session of the Executive Board of the World Health Organization (WHO), Qatar’s Minister of Public Health and WHO’s Chair of the Executive Board, HE Dr. Hanan Mohammed Al Kuwari said that Qatar will remain a steadfast partner of WHO in the future as well, with a voluntary contribution for the programmed work of WHO in 2024 to the amount of 4 million USD. This was made recently when Qatar joined other high-level celebrations of the first WHO Investment Round dubbed “All for Health, Health for All” in which HE Dr. Al Kuwari represented the country.
In her speech, HE Dr. Al Kuwari underscored Qatar’s key support and commitments to WHO where the country stands in the 7th position among member states in the payment of program budget for 2020-2021 and QAR 37 million contribution in 2021. About WHO, she stressed on partner role to do multilateral, regional, and country-specific initiatives in health related areas that are supposed to implement globally.
He further thanked HE Dr. Al Kuwari and emphasized Qatar’s steadfast dedication to respecting, promoting, realizing, and protecting the right to health for every citizen especially in the context of rising international hazards including but not limited to climate change, growing inequalities in health in the international context, and the likelihood of epidemics. She outlined General Programme of Work 14 (GPW 14) for WHO for the years 2025-2028 that is focused on improving the health of the world population.
Subsequently, to financial support GPW 14 adequately, there is a need to survey methods that placed more prerogatives on predictability and flexibility in their funding sources according to HE Dr. Al Kuwari. She mentioned the historical decision of Qatar to increase contributions to WHO and reiterated on the rights of people to access health facilities and care, saying that the progress in global health could only be attained when countries are willing to work together.
The first Investment Round of WHO was also celebrated where high-ranking officials from many nations, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, and other leaders of WHO attended.
