14 October 2025
It is a real pleasure to be here today with our friends and colleagues from Unitaid.
Signing this Letter of Mutual Understanding is an important step in strengthening our collaboration to make life-saving health products and services accessible to everyone, everywhere, across the Eastern Mediterranean Region.
This partnership builds on a goal we deeply share: ensuring that affordable, quality-assured, and well-adapted medicines, health products, and innovative delivery mechanisms reach the people who need them most, when they need them.
Together, we have made strong progress in areas such as HIV, tuberculosis, malaria, hepatitis, and women’s health—including cervical cancer.
These efforts are not only about combating disease; they are about protecting communities, empowering health systems, and improving lives across our Member States.
Our Region faces many challenges—emergencies, fragile systems, and inequities in access. Yet it is also a Region of resilience, innovation, and hope.
Working hand-in-hand with Unitaid gives us the opportunity to connect global innovation with local priorities, to bring practical solutions where they are needed most, and to advance our shared goal of universal health coverage.
We are especially excited to deepen collaboration in local manufacturing and access to medical oxygen—key to building stronger and more self-reliant health systems.
I want to sincerely thank Dr Philippe Duneton and the Unitaid team for their trust, partnership, and vision.
I look forward to continuing our work together to strengthen regional self-reliance, promote sustainability, and advance global health security.
