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Monday, 25 May 2026 WHO Director-General's opening remarks at the 159th session of the Executive Board – 25 May 202625 May Chair, Honourable Minister Tandin Wangchuk, Excellencies, Members of the EB, dear colleagues and friends, First, my congratulations to Minister Wangchuk on your election as Chair. I would like to thank you also for raising PABS and assessed contributions in your opening speech. Thank you for your leadership, and I can see that you will make sure these two agenda items come to fruition. And I would like to once again thank our outgoing Chair Blair Comley of Australia for his leadership during a decisive year in WHO’s history. I would like to thank the outgoing members of the Board: Australia, Barbados, Cameroon, Comoros, Democratic Republic of Korea, Lesotho, Togo, Qatar, Switzerland and Ukraine. And I welcome the new members: Bhutan, China, Côte d’Ivoire, Georgia, Guinea, Kuwait, Mozambique, South Sudan, Suriname and the United Kingdom. I look forward to working with you, and with all board members over the course of the next year. At the opening of the World Health Assembly one week ago, I described some of the key ways in which the Secretariat has changed over the past nine years as part of the WHO Transformation. We have worked hard to become more effective and efficient, and we continue to do so. But I also very much appreciate the leadership of Member States on governance reform, which is one of the key issues on your agenda for this meeting. I thank the Officers of the Board for their report, and for the design of the pilot. We look forward to your discussion and to the implementation of the pilot. Your agenda for this meeting also includes consideration of the final report of the Standing Committee on Health Emergency Prevention, Preparedness and Response, or SCHEPPR. SCHEPPR was created as a standing committee of the Executive Board during the COVID-19 pandemic to address gaps in health security governance. It was one of many measures the Secretariat has taken to make the world safer, in response to the lessons of the COVID-19 pandemic. Since then, the World Health Assembly has adopted amendments to the International Health Regulations and the WHO Pandemic Agreement. Accordingly, SCHEPPR’s mandate is ending, and I thank Member States for their work over the past few years. Of course, there remains one final piece of the puzzle: the PABS annex. Although PABS is not on your agenda, it is critical to making the Pandemic Agreement operational. I will continue to use every opportunity to remind our Member States of the need to work with urgency in the coming weeks and months to finalise it. The current outbreaks of Ebola and hantavirus remind us that the next pandemic will not wait for us. The hantavirus outbreak is now stable, with one new case in the past two weeks, and no new deaths since the 2nd of May. However, the Ebola outbreak in DRC is spreading rapidly. Likewise, although sustainable financing is not on your agenda for this meeting, it is relevant to the entire agenda. It’s essential for WHO to fulfil its vast mission and mandate, and for making it resilient from shocks like the one we had last year. The restructuring has now been completed, the Organization is more stable, and we are moving forward. Thank you so much to all Member States for making that happen. It was your support that enabled us to stabilize. But significant risks remain. So I continue to call on Member States to approve the final three increases in assessed contributions, starting with the next increase at the 80th World Health Assembly in a year’s time. Of course, the January-February Board meeting will be crucial for this. Your agenda for this meeting also includes the process for the election of the next Director-General at next year’s World Health Assembly, which is obviously very important for the future of the Organization. Taken together, your agenda for this meeting is about strengthening the foundations of WHO: how we are governed, how we deliver, and how we support Member States. At the Health Assembly, Member States showed that progress is possible even in a difficult global context – marked by conflict, outbreaks, financial pressure and division. Those conditions have not changed. But neither has the need for cooperation. The Executive Board has a critical role at this point: to provide direction, exercise oversight, and ensure that the work entrusted to the Secretariat remains focused on impact in countries. Our commitment is clear. We will continue to align our work with your priorities, to strengthen efficiency and transparency, and to support implementation at country level. We look forward to your leadership, Chair, and to that of this Board to drive forward this important work. Thank you all once again for your support and commitment to WHO, and to our shared vision of the highest attainable standard of health for all people, as a fundamental right. I look forward to our discussion, and your guidance, and wish you all the very best. Chair, thank you and back to you.
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