The Minister of Health and Population, Hala Zayed, participated in the meeting on “Managing Financial Resources to Accelerate the Implementation of the ICPD Agenda” at a high-level political forum in New York, the United States, according to a statement from the ministry on Saturday night.
The forum is organised to fulfil the promise of the International Conference of Population and Development agenda in order to achieve the Goals of Sustainable Development and the Agenda of 2063, with the participation of African states.
In her speech, Zayed stressed her keenness to participate in this important conference as the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) is one of the most important partners in the implementation of health and population activities in Egypt.
She noted that reproductive health is one of the most important human rights for the eradication of poverty and the implementation of the Goals of Sustainable Development in its social, economic, and environmental dimensions.
“Although investment returns have proven to be effective in reproductive health rights, there is still a shortfall in continued funding in this area, and the ministry of health is always keen to develop national implementation plans that span years for reproductive health rights emanating from the National Strategy for Population (2015-2030),” said Zayed.
The minister pointed out that the Egyptian state is keen on improving the effective use of available resources and national and international financial flows for reproductive health rights, as well as to review the grant methodology in return for spending.
She added that Egypt has made remarkable progress in investment and expenditure on family planning and reproductive health. The rate of expenditure on the family planning programme is between 2015 and 2018 and has doubled by 59.5%, and the expenditure rate increased to 77.7% between 2015 and 2018.
The ministry of health and population in Egypt has taken measures to provide family planning services to all couples who wish to have children or spacing between birth from 5,400 clinics in addition to organising 583 mobile clinics for the deprived, random, and border areas in order to provide family planning and reproductive health services, noted Zayed.
Meanwhile, the minister of health headed to Port Said on Sunday morning to follow up on the experimental operation of the comprehensive health insurance system. The system was launched in Port Said early in July as the first governorate to apply the system in order to generalise it across the country after that.
