Strategic Actions in Small Island Developing States
SIDS Summit for Health
WHO / Yoshi Shimizu
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Credits
WHO is hosting the first global gathering of leaders focusing exclusively on health in Small Island Developing States, or SIDS.
The SIDS Summit for Health brings together SIDS heads of states, ministers of health and others to discuss the urgent health challenges and needs they face. It will help amplify SIDS voices, promote collaborative action and strengthen health and development partnerships and financing.
Watch the SIDS Summit for Health
The sessions can be watched live on 28 - 29 June 2021. Recordings are available in the sidebar listing. The interpretation of proceedings serves to facilitate communication and does not constitute an authentic or verbatim record of the proceedings. Only the original speech is authentic.
About the SIDS Summit for Health
The Summit brought together leaders and communities from Small Island Developing States to discuss the urgent health threats and needs they face. It will help amplify SIDS voices, promote collaborative action and strengthen health and development partnerships and financing.
Major expected outcomes of the Summit include mobilization of targeted financing and partnerships and a joint statement of priority short-term actions. These will include steps to advance ongoing health initiatives, and to help drive results at the UN Food Systems Summit in September 2021, the 26th Climate Change Conference in November 2021, the Nutrition for Growth Summits in December 2021 and the years following.
The Summit engaged heads of state and government, ministers of health from the WHO SIDS Member States, as well as representatives of key regional and sub regional bodies; partner governments and agencies; civil society; youth; public-private partnerships and academia.
Documents
Key Documents:
SIDS Health Policy Briefs:
About the Strategic Actions in Small Island Developing States
Small Island Developing States - known as SIDS - face a set of serious and urgent health threats. COVID-19 has presented a dire economic and health crisis for SIDS, while other health risks such as climate change, NCDs and malnutrition have further deteriorated sustainable development goals in Island States.
In 2021, the World Health Organization has launched a special initiative to ensure SIDS become a global health priority. Through a range of strategic actions, WHO is working to strengthen technical capacity, resilient facilities, health workforces, supply platforms, and evidence generation and use. The initiative will thereby galvanize targeted support for a healthy and resilient future in Small Island Developing States.
Strategic actions to prioritize health in SIDS will be implemented based on 4 key principles:
- Give high political visibility to the health challenges in SIDS;
- Respond to already-defined demands of SIDS with strengthened bottom-up approaches;
- Bring together and scale-up work across WHO its existing programmes;
- Track progress, including through indicators aligned with 13th Global Programme of Work.
The SIDS Initiative builds on ongoing programmatic work by WHO, including on climate change and health, COVID-19 response and recovery, NCDs and nutrition, Health Workforce, Universal Health Coverage and Primary Health Care.