This year's World Health Day is an opportunity to affirm our common goal to eliminate inequities, especially health inequities, Elena Panova, the United Nations Resident Coordinator in Egypt, said on Wednesday marking the occasion. "It is our common goal to ensure that everyone, everywhere, can realize the right to good health. We call on leaders to ensure that everyone has living and working conditions that are conducive to good health. It is part of a year-long global campaign to bring people together to build a fairer, healthier world," she added. On this special occasion, and on behalf of the United Nations in Egypt, Panova said that she would like to express the UN Egypt sincere thanks and appreciation to each health worker in Egypt including doctors, pharmacists, dentists, nurses, midwives, caregivers, and practitioners for their role in continuously providing high quality of health treatment and care. "We would like to acknowledge the burden borne by the health workers being at the frontline during the unprecedented crisis of Coronavirus pandemic, coping with unexpected numbers of patients, working for long hours, and taking lots of risks," Panova said. This year, the World Health Organization (WHO) chose the theme of 2021 to be "Building a fairer, healthier world" to bring to our attention that our world is an unequal one. She explained that we can see that many people around the world are unable to live healthier lives due to the conditions in which they are born, grow, live, work and age. COVID-19 pandemic has deepened and exposed such inequalities. It pushed more people into poverty and food insecurity, and amplified gender, social and health inequities. She explained further that in Egypt, as it has elsewhere, the virus has cut short lives and impacted the livelihood of each and everyone. All socio-economic sectors were affected including health that was hit hard. All these implications prompted Egypt to take and implement an enormous number of measures to ensure the safety of everyone, and contain the repercussions of the pandemic with the aim of helping the community to build forward better. She mentioned that the United Nations in Egypt endorsed a proactive approach to curb the implications of the outbreak of this pandemic through working closely with the Government of Egypt and the different stakeholders to develop and implement the Health and Socio-Economic Response and Recovery Plans. These plans were the UN's offer to mitigate and respond to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic especially on the most vulnerable groups as well as to accelerate post-COVID inclusive and sustainable recovery in line with the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. "Addressing inequalities and targeting the most vulnerable is our focus with the aim of Leaving No One Behind in such critical time," she assured.
