GENEVA, 21 May 2015 – Thai Public Health Minister Ratchata Ratchatanawin attended on Thursday a meeting with his counterparts from six other members in the ‘Foreign Policy and Global Health’ initiative, at the 68th World Health Assembly (WHA) 2015 in Geneva, Switzerland.
The Foreign Policy and Global Health (FPGH) initiative comprises seven countries, namely Brazil, Indonesia, France, Norway, Senegal, South Africa and Thailand. They formed the group in 2006, hoping to improve world health through the multilateral cooperation in foreign affairs policies.
According to Mr.Ratchata, four issues discussed in the meeting were related to the building resilient health system, the international health crisis management, as well as health in the post 2015 Sustainable Development Goals.
Mr.Ratchata also attended the Parallel Meeting on Antibiotics Smart Use to boost serious effort to reduce opportunity of drug resistance in the future after latest World Health Organization (WHO) report in 2013 indicated several antimicrobial drug resistance including urinary tract infectious bacteria, pneumonia and Tuberculosis.
Around 20% of old patients with Tuberculosis and 3.5% of new patients become drug resistant. 480,000 new patients who are infected with Tuberculosis are residing in 100 countries. This has urged all countries to put more efforts on the control of the drug resistance in order to prevent loss of medical expense and deaths of patients.
Mr.Ratchata confirmed that Thailand has continuously provided support to the FPGH initiative. The Thai government aims to promote the cross-ministerial integration in improve sustainable public health throughout 2015.
