Date: 2017-10-26 20:44:18 ID: 1746
Niamey, 25 October 2017 – The annual meeting on health planning in the ECOWAS region opened this morning 25 October 2017 at Hotel Ténéré in Niamey, Niger.
This annual meeting, instituted last year by the Director General of the West Africa health organisation as a statutory meeting, aims at “continuing and strengthening the dialogue and collaboration on health planning as well as monitoring and evaluation mechanisms”. It brought together Directors of Planning from the Ministries Health, and representatives from the Ministries in charge of Planning, Economy and Finance from the 15 member States of ECOWAS, technical and financial partners: WHO, WAEMU and UNICEF.
The Chief Director of the Ministry of public health, Dr RANAOU Abaché, chaired the opening ceremony in the presence of the Director General of WAHO, Dr Xavier CRESPIN.
In his welcome address the DG of WAHO recalled the mandate conferred on his institution, which is to contribute, together with the other institutions of the community, to the achievement of the ideal of creating an economic union of West Africa in line with article 3 of the revised ECOWAS treaty. This article stipulates that the objective of WAHO is “to offer the highest level of health service to the people of the sub-region on the basis of harmonisation of polices of member States, the pooling of resources and cooperation among member States and third-party countries with a view to finding, collectively and strategically, solutions to the health problems in the sub-region”.
Dr Crespin pointed out that the deliberations will centre around issues such as the implementation of the recommendations of the 2016 meeting, an overview of the implementation of the WAHO 2016-2020 strategic plan, universal health coverage and public-private partnership.
In his opening speech, the Chief Director, Dr Abaché RANAOU, representing the Minister of public health, welcomed all participants and thanked WAHO for choosing Niger to host this important meeting.
He noted that this planning meeting, initiated for the second time by WAHO, was commendable because it offers a framework for sharing experiences and successes with a view to achieving better health results through the implementation of national health strategies.
Dr Ranaou finally expressed the wish that these inter-country deliberations would enable each and everyone to draw lessons from the successes, which will enable them make progress on the very important tasks that are so important for the health systems, particularly the public-private partnership in health and universal health coverage in the ECOWAS region, which represent some of the major concerns at the centre of national and international policy agendas.