Thank you Chair,
- Migration of health personnel, particularly migration from countries with some of the most fragile health systems in the world, continues to represent a great challenge. Qualified health personnel are the backbone of any health service provision. The Code is a valuable mechanism in the retention of human resources in health in the most vulnerable countries.
- Lack of accurate, reliable, standardized, and timely data of health workers at national and sub-national levels hampers wider efforts at managing inward and outward migration flows of health workers. We need more information on health workforce migration if we are to devise evidence-based policies and sustainable solutions.
- As noted by some Member States at the World Health Assembly in 2013, the first round of national reporting on the Code shows that despite encouraging signs of implementation in the most developed parts of the world, we have a long way to go in the implementation of the Code on a global scale. We strongly encourage the Regional Offices to closely follow up on their Member States in order to increase the number of countries reporting, and we look forward to seeing the review of relevance and effectiveness of the Code with its recommendations to guide implementation.
Thank you.