Actualités

19 May 2025

Excellencies,

Distinguished Colleagues,

It is an honour to join you today, and I thank His Excellency the Chair―Dr Saleh al-Hasnawi, Minister of Health of the Republic of Iraq―for this important opportunity.

The World Health Organization greatly values its longstanding partnership with the League of Arab States.

Our cooperation is rooted in a shared commitment to improving lives and health across the Arab region—through solidarity, evidence-based action, and a collective will to advance health for all.

Together, we have made significant progress.

Our joint achievements include the Regional Nursing and Midwifery Strategy,1 the Multi-sectoral Arab Strategy for Maternal, Child, and Adolescent Health,2 the Arab Strategy on Health and Environment,3 and the Arab Strategy for Health-Friendly Budgeting.

On disaster risk reduction, WHO has supported Member States with risk profiling, emergency planning, and health-focused capacity-building―including at the Sixth Arab Platform for Disaster Risk Reduction in Kuwait this year.

Our joint work on tobacco control represents a model for multisectoral cooperation. Crucially, the League supported the adoption and implementation of the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control across Arab countries—demonstrating the power of a unified Arab response to a regional public health challenge.

Our work in areas such as national health surveys, health indicator reporting, and digital health strategies is laying the groundwork for more data-driven policymaking across the region.

Each of these initiatives reflects the power of partnership to deliver results across sectors.

Yet we must face the reality of a deeply concerning health outlook.

The Eastern Mediterranean Region continues to bear a disproportionate share of global humanitarian crises—hosting one-third of all global

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20 May 2025

Agreement’s adoption follows three years of intensive negotiation launched due to gaps and inequities identified in national and global COVID-19 response.

Agreement boosts global collaboration to ensure stronger, more equitable response to future pandemics.

Next steps include negotiations on Pathogen Access and Benefits Sharing system.

Member States of the World Health Organization (WHO) today formally adopted by consensus the world's first Pandemic Agreement. The landmark decision by the 78^th World Health Assembly culminates more than three years of intensive negotiations launched by governments in response to the devastating impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, and driven by the goal of making the world safer from – and more equitable in response to – future pandemics.

“The world is safer today thanks to the leadership, collaboration and commitment of our Member States to adopt the historic WHO Pandemic Agreement,” said Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General. “The Agreement is a victory for public health, science and multilateral action. It will ensure we, collectively, can better protect the world from future pandemic threats. It is also a recognition by the international community that our citizens, societies and economies must not be left vulnerable to again suffer losses like those endured during COVID-19.”  

Governments adopted the WHO Pandemic Agreement today in a plenary session of the World Health Assembly, WHO’s peak decision-making body. The adoption followed yesterday’s approval of the Agreement by vote (124 in favour, 0 objections, 11 abstentions) in Committee by Member State delegations.

“Starting during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, governments

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Riyadh, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia – 19 May 2025 – The WHO Foundation has signed a strategic Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Tawuniya, Saudi Arabia’s largest insurance provider, marking its first-ever corporate partnership in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region. This milestone agreement establishes a framework for advancing regional health priorities in alignment with the World Health Organization’s mission.

The MoU was signed at a high-level event in Riyadh, held during Tawuniya’s Research and Development Forum and attended by more than 100 invited guests. Dr. Othman Alkassabi, Group CEO of Tawuniya, and Dr. Hadi Al Enazy, Senior Executive Director, Health Transformation and Governance, signed on behalf of Tawuniya. Anil Soni, CEO of the WHO Foundation, joined virtually from Geneva, while Reem Abdelhamid, Regional Director for the Middle East and North Africa region, signed on behalf of the WHO Foundation in person.

“This agreement isn’t just a first for the WHO Foundation in the Gulf, it’s a new kind of partnership for public health. With Tawuniya and MEENA Health, we are building a platform rooted in innovation, equity, and shared purpose. Together, we’re helping to shape the future of how health systems are strengthened and sustained across the region through digital health, local leadership, and smart collaboration.”

— Anil Soni, CEO of the WHO Foundation

"Today marks a

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15 May 2025, Cairo, Egypt – The World Health Organization (WHO) Regional Office for the Eastern Mediterranean has launched a landmark innovation designed to transform how countries prepare for and respond to health emergencies.

The All-Hazard Information Management (AIM) Toolkit leverages generative artificial intelligence to drastically reduce the time needed to produce critical response documents from weeks to minutes while maintaining high technical quality and contextual relevance. It was developed by the Health Emergencies Team at the Regional Office for the Eastern Mediterranean with support from NORCAP (part of the Norwegian Refugee Council) and WHO’s Global Hub for Pandemic and Epidemic Intelligence in Berlin.

Multiple protracted emergencies, ranging from disease outbreaks and displacement to climate-related shocks and conflict, place immense pressure on overstretched systems across the Region. The AIM Toolkit responds to this urgent need by equipping WHO and health authorities with a rapid, reliable and context-sensitive mechanism to guide emergency decision-making from the outset of crisis.

WHO’s involvement in emergency response is triggered through a structured decision-making process anchored in the Organization’s Emergency Response Framework (ERF). This includes assessing the hazard, planning the response and monitoring impact in alignment with existing capacities, vulnerabilities and global coordination mechanisms such as the WHO-led United Nations Health Cluster. While these steps are essential to ensure quality and accountability, they are often time intensive.

The AIM Toolkit embeds AI in key stages of this

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12 May 2025

Good morning, and a very warm welcome to all of you.

As we commemorate International Nurses Day, we honour the dedication, resilience, and leadership of nurses across the Eastern Mediterranean Region and beyond.

Nurses and midwives are the backbone of our health systems―comprising more than half of the global health workforce.

Today, we launch the second State of the World’s Nursing report, just five years before the deadline for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals.

The report highlights important progress, including a global increase in the number of nurses, but it also reminds us of the challenges we face.

The nursing workforce is essential to achieving SDG 3 regarding “Good Health and Wellbeing” by 2030, particularly for universal health coverage and strengthening primary health care.

However, progress is off-track, and without targeted action, nursing workforce gaps will persist beyond 2030—especially in the most vulnerable regions.

The Eastern Mediterranean Region currently has the second lowest density of nurses globally—just 15.5 per 10,000 population, compared to a global average of 37.1.

Alarmingly, we are projected to account for nearly one-quarter of the global nursing shortfall by 2030.

We face tough realities: deteriorating working conditions, gaps in education and training, weak regulation, deep inequities, and the emigration of nurses.

To make matters worse, more than sixty per cent of global attacks on health care occur in our Region.

We urgently need targeted, high-impact, and sustainable investments in jobs, education, leadership, and service delivery.

WHO’s Regional Flagship Initiative on Investing in a Resilient Health Workforce is helping to accelerate these efforts.

The initiative promotes increased investment

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