Minister Ruales highlighted the Ten-Year Health Plan before the Plenary of the World Assembly, in Geneva – Ministry of Public Health

2023-05-22 21:45:47

Geneva, May 22, 2023

This Monday, May 22, 2023, the Minister of Public Health, José Ruales, presented to the Plenary of the 76th World Health Assembly the public policies, strategies and actions for prevention and health promotion led by this portfolio of State, in favor of the 18 million Ecuadorians.

In his speech, Minister Ruales stressed that Ecuador works collectively for a fairer and more equitable health. To do this, it joins efforts with actors at a local, regional and global level. “We promote South-South Cooperation, North-South Cooperation, multilateralism and regional integration, in the Americas and the Andean Region, in order to expand the network of allies that work for the health of the population,” he said. .

Before the Plenary, he socialized the results of these common efforts and pointed out that, at the local level, the Ten-Year Health Plan (PDS) 2022-203 is being executed, a public policy that has five fundamental pillars that were built through dialogue and collaboration. coordination between health professionals, academics, communities, among others.

The PDS is focused on defending equity in health, especially for vulnerable groups. In this sense, the country promotes the strategy “Ecuador Grows Without Child Chronic Malnutrition”, with an intersectoral approach, also addresses the comprehensive prevention of victims of gender violence.

Likewise, another pillar of the MSP is to strengthen health promotion to improve the living conditions of the population, where health professionals build healthy spaces together with the community and address issues of nutritional and anti-smoking awareness, adolescent pregnancy, among others.

Disease prevention is another essential factor that the institution leads to reduce the avoidable mortality rate and prevent increased morbidity from non-communicable diseases, maternal death, detect and control high blood pressure and diabetes.

The highest authority also emphasized the hiring of new health professionals, in order to strengthen timely and quality care provided in health establishments, as well as efficient drug purchasing mechanisms.

Likewise, he highlighted three projects that are in progress: digital transformation (telemedicine); intercultural health, which reduces cultural barriers; and community mental health.

At the end of his speech, Ruales made a call to the community and to the member countries. “Let’s continue working in solidarity for health. The road traveled for 75 years together with the World Health Organization (WHO) and 120 years with the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) has been worth it and the advances are important, there is still a long way to go to achieve the health goal,” he concluded.

As part of the agenda of the Health Authority in Geneva, he met with Dr. Jarbas Barbosa, Regional Director of PAHO. At the meeting, they analyzed the technical cooperation that PAHO provides to Ecuador, among them, the commitments to collaborate in the implementation of the Ten-Year Health Plan. In addition, several points were touched on to strengthen the Comprehensive Health Services Networks, international purchase of medicines, devices, strategic equipment and vaccines.

He also met with the WHO digital transformation team. There, various topics were analyzed, where technical support and cooperation was coordinated in:

• Telemedicine: sharing experiences, technical guides and standardization.
• Demand attention and information on social networks, health influencers and applications for public use.
• Artificial intelligence applied to health, governance and impact.
• Architecture for interoperability of computer systems, electronic medical records and supply chain management.
• Information sharing with other countries and reliable information networks.