We Are Tomodachi Winter 2018

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18Prime Minister’s Remarks on Universal Health CoverageDelivered at the UHC forum held in Tokyo, Dec. 14, 2017Background and overview of UHC Forum 2017Exactly two years ago, Japan held an international conference in Tokyo and expressed its strong commitment to promoting Universal Health Coverage (UHC). Japan is very pleased to have held the “UHC Forum 2017” on a scale much larger than two years ago jointly with the World Bank, the World Health Organization (WHO), and UNICEF. Importance of UHC and Japan’s recent effortsFor many years, Japan has placed emphasis on the global health agenda from the perspective of human security. In particular, the promotion of UHC is an essential element of the initiative to realize a society that leaves no one behind, the core principle of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Based on this recognition, at the G7 Ise-Shima Summit last year, Japan, as President of the Summit, advocated for the first time at the leaders’ level a vision for promoting UHC with better preparedness for pandemics. Since then, Japan has been calling for efforts to realize UHC together with the rest of the international community and has also been making its own efforts, including through the announcement at TICAD VI of “UHC in Africa” and making full use of such occasions as the United Nations General Assembly this year. Moreover, last year, Japan formulated the Basic Principles of the Asia Health and Wellbeing Initiative. We plan to share with other Asian countries our own experience of UHC in an aging society in terms of systems such as universal health insurance and long-term care insurance.Five major challenges to be addressedMeanwhile, there remain many challenges that we must overcome to achieve UHC. I will touch upon five aspects we need to address in order to accelerate the promotion of UHC in the future. The first challenge: Momentum at the global levelThe first aspect is the need to strengthen global momentum towards UHC. It was decided in United Nations resolutions adopted this month to hold a U.N. high-level meeting on UHC in 2019 and to designate December 12 as International Universal Health Coverage Day. This is a huge step towards strengthening this momentum. Japan will also host the Nutrition for Growth Summit in Tokyo in 2020 to promote efforts in the field of nutrition, which constitutes a foundational element of health. Furthermore, as an outcome of this Forum, in order to accelerate achievement of the UHC-related targets in the SDGs by 2030, I propose setting intermediate targets by 2023, the midpoint as we head towards the SDGs target year. Let us aim by 2023 to extend essential health coverage to a further 1 billion people and halve to 50 million the number of people being pushed into extreme poverty by health expenses. To achieve these intermediate targets, Japan will continue to make its utmost efforts to develop a global framework to promote UHC, together with Secretary-General Guterres of the United Nations and other leaders of the international community.The second challenge: Cooperation at the country levelThe second aspect we need to address is the need to develop and implement a framework for cooperation at the country level. To realize UHC, it is necessary to make