Address by Ms. Michiyo TAKAGI, State Minister of Health, Labour and Welfare of Japan, on the Occasion of the Seventy-first World Health Assembly (22 May 2018)

1. Introduction
Mr. President, Director-General, Dr. Tedros, Distinguished Delegates, Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen,
I am honored to speak here on behalf of the Government of Japan.

2. Promoting UHC
Mr. President,
I would like to highly commend Director-General Dr. Tedros for his strong leadership. We appreciate the WHO for its contribution to promote Universal Health Coverage (UHC) as a priority issue.

Toward achieving UHC, strengthening health system and ensuring sustainable financing mechanism are essential. Each government must take ownership and design a robust mechanism that protects vulnerable people from financial hardship.

Japan has focused on achieving UHC in global health diplomacy and made various efforts to push this agenda forward. Last year, we co-hosted UHC Forum 2017 with the WHO. At the meeting, the “UHC Tokyo Declaration” was adopted as a commitment to strengthen global momentum, accelerate country-led process, continue a progress monitoring and facilitate innovation. Japan also made a pledge to promote UHC, including a 45-million-dollar contribution to the WHO. Through these efforts, we will further strengthen momentum towards the UN High-Level Meeting on UHC next year.

3. Health crisis measures and UHC
Mr. President,
The outbreak of Ebola Virus Disease in the Democratic Republic of Congo brought to mind that strengthening responses to public health emergencies is imperative.

As the world has begun more globalized, and the threat of infectious diseases that may spread beyond borders has been increasing, we assume that we should not make geographical blank by leaving a specific region behind.

4. Aging of population and maintaining UHC
Mr. President,
Based on our experiences, maintaining UHC is very important as well as achieving it. Japan has maintained UHC through a number of system-wide reforms and legislation revision, adapting to population aging and economic conditions.

Japan hosted the ASEAN-Japan Health Ministers Meeting on UHC and Population Ageing last year. Even a country currently having a young population will rapidly become an aging society in the decades to come. As the most advanced aging country in the world, we are willing to share our past and present policies as well as expertise and contribute to the world to overcome the challenges of an ever aging population.

5. Patient safety
Mr. President,
UHC must aim at improvement of health outcome for each individual. Thus, ensuring safe and high-quality health services are vital to achieve UHC.

Last month, Japan hosted the third Global Ministerial Summit on Patient Safety. We discussed how to foster patient safety culture with patients’ perspectives, and maintain patient safety in an aging society. The Summit was concluded with Tokyo Declaration, calling for global action to boost patient safety, with the aim of mitigating all preventable and harmful events and risks for all people by 2030. We will continue to promote high quality and safe medical care worldwide together with the WHO.

6. Countermeasures for tuberculosis
Mr. President,
Among infectious diseases, tuberculosis is the largest cause of death globally. To get political commitment to end TB, a UN High-Level Meeting will be held this September.

Japan will co-facilitate this meeting and do its utmost to consolidate political declarations. Seventy years ago, TB was the leading cause of death in Japan. However, we simultaneously achieved both UHC and a dramatic decrease in number of new infection by establishing a public funding system for TB treatment and introducing a national health insurance system. To end TB, we will continue efforts, including countermeasures against AMR, through innovations in new medicines for AMR and diagnostic products of TB.

7. Conclusion
Mr. President,
To conclude, we look forward to working with all partners towards our common goal of achieving UHC by 2030, including at the UN High-Level Meeting on UHC.

Thank you for your kind attention.