Roadmap 2017-2021: Stronger organization and better response to the needs of Member States in the Eastern Mediterranean Region.

In October 2016, the Regional Committee for the Eastern Mediterranean Region granted me the great honour of being nominated to be the new Regional Director for the WHO Eastern Mediterranean Region (1). In January 2017, the WHO Executive Board endorsed the Regional Committee recommendation and confirmed my appointment for a five-year period beginning 1 February 2017 (2). I have begun my new role by putting the commitments made to the Regional Committee into action; namely by establishing an Interdepartmental Taskforce to develop a clear roadmap for WHO’s work in the Region during the coming five years. The establishment of the Taskforce aims to facilitate a Regional Office-wide approach to addressing the health priorities of the Eastern Mediterranean Region in a systematic and comprehensive way. In addition, it ensures that the work of the Regional Office is aligned with the needs of Member States and streamlined with the Governing Bodies’ (World Health Assembly [WHA], Executive Board and Regional Committee) resolutions and decisions. Moreover, the Taskforce has included a work plan for the preparation of this Roadmap, taking into consideration the need to involve staff at the Eastern Mediterranean Regional Office (EMRO) as well as in WHO country offices and Member States of the Region. This plan has involved a series of meetings with stakeholders, physically and virtually, to ensure active participation and fruitful contribution of staff and Member States. With this in mind, the outline framework of the Roadmap was shared with the Subcommittee of the Regional Committee during its meeting in April 2017, followed by the presentation of a draft Roadmap to Member States in the Region on 21 May 2017 in Geneva, Switzerland, just before the 70th World Health Assembly (3); and to the heads of WHO's country offices in their meeting of 13–15 June 2017. I would expect the Roadmap to be finalized in September 2017 in order to start its implementation by October 2017. Ultimately my vision is to increase EMRO capacity in order to meet the needs of Member States, by making WHO in the Region more effective, efficient, open, accountable, and transparent over the next 5 years. It is my desire to see EMRO on the front line in providing health leadership and the necessary technical and managerial support to Member States in addressing health challenges in the Region. The Roadmap takes into consideration the global and regional environments in which EMRO is working, including the global commitment to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (4) and WHO Reform Agenda (5). Moreover, it considers the sustainable development goals (SDGs) as the overall framework guiding the work of the Organization with Member States in the Region. While WHO ensures the consistency of this Roadmap with SDGs, I have formulated five top priority areas in order to make tangible achievements during the next five years. In addition, the Roadmap looks to promote a productive, creative and innovative environment within EMRO, with efforts focused on further development of staff skills, effective communication, appropriate coordination mechanisms, a stronger teamwork environment and enhanced delegation of authority to staff in order to promote greater accountability and transparency. The Roadmap has been constructed on four interrelated pillars; namely joint public health priorities; enabling factors; EMRO’s presence in Member States; and EMRO’s working environment. “Joint public health priorities” represent the top technical priority area that EMRO will focus on from 2017 to 2021. They are called “joint” to clearly draw attention to the fact that they cannot be addressed individually, but remain interlinked both in terms of challenges as well as strategic approaches. They include: