Health and Medical Care
Minister for Foreign Affairs KAMIKAWA Yoko’s participation in the UN General Assembly High-Level Meeting
on Pandemic Prevention, Preparedness and Response (PPR)
On September 20, commencing at 2:36 p.m. (EDT) (September 21, 3:36 a.m. JST), Ms. KAMIKAWA Yoko, Minister for Foreign Affairs of Japan, visiting New York to attend the United Nations General Assembly, attended the UN General Assembly High-Level Meeting on Pandemic Prevention, Preparedness and Response (PPR). The attendees of the meeting, in addition to Minister KAMIKAWA, included Mr. Dennis Francis, President of the 78th Session of the United Nations General Assembly, Ms. Amina Mohammed, the Deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations, Dr. Tedros Ghebreyesus, Director-General, World Health Organization and Mr.Axel van Trotsenburg, Senior Managing Director of the World Bank Group and other representatives. The overview of the meeting is as follows:
- In her national statement, Minister KAMIKAWA stated that, based on the lessons learned from the COVID-19, the international community must work together hand-in-hand, with a sense of urgency, to develop the global health architecture and strengthen PPR for the entire world, including developing countries.
- In addition, Minister KAMIKAWA stated that as the Presidency of the G7 Hiroshima Summit, Japan has made substantial contributions to strengthening PPR. She shared with the participants G7’s commitments to enhancing political momentum including leader-level governance, strengthening international norms and regulations, ensuring equitable access to medical countermeasures (MCM) including vaccines worldwide, promoting the “MCM Delivery Partnership for Equitable Access”, and making financial contributions.
- The participants expressed their views on the necessity of further enhancing cooperation with relevant countries and organizations. The participants actively discussed on the ways to strengthen pandemic PPR.
- At the meeting, the Political Declaration on pandemic PPR was approved. This Political Declaration demonstrated strong political-level commitments for pandemic PPR, such as recognizing the role of primary health care for achieving universal health coverage (UHC) and SDGs, strengthening governance at the highest political levels and across all relevant sectors, strengthening financial and investment commitments and, ensuring equitable access to MCM including vaccines, diagnostics, therapeutics and other health products.
Statement by Foreign Minister KAMIKAWA (English (PDF)
/ Japanese (PDF))
UHC means that all people have access to the full range of quality health services they need, when and where they need them, without financial hardship.