BANGKOK - EPF brought a five-member parliamentary delegation to this year’s Prince Mahidol Award Conference PMAC 2020 - UHC Forum 2020, which was held from 28 January to 2 February 2020 in Bangkok, Thailand. This year’s edition of the PMAC Conference focused on “Accelerating Progress Towards UHC”. Members of Parliament from Albania, Kenya, Romania, Tanzania and Zimbabwe took part in the visit.
The Parliamentary Delegation was conducted within the framework of the Global Parliamentary Alliance on Health, Rights and Development (GPA) and featured various sessions of MP Forum. The MP Forum focused on supporting parliamentary involvement on Universal Health Coverage (UHC) with a view to ensuring a high level and informative exchange with relevant stakeholders on the issue and that a parliamentary perspective supporting urgent action on UHC is brought in relevant settings.
In addition to the delegation’s active participation in the official PMAC2020 Agenda, Parliamentary delegates met with representatives from MSD, PATH, PHCPI, UHC2030 and UNFPA Asia-Pacific. MP Forum discussions enabled delegation participants to learn and exchange on the role of parliamentarians in all legislative, budgetary and policy progress matters related to UHC as well as on the importance of challenging decision-makers about the progress that is currently being made in advancing the UHC agenda.
During the final plenary session entitled “From Political Declaration to Real Actions", Hon. Esther Passaris, MP, Kenya, addressed all distinguished panellists and PMAC2020 participants on the importance the importance of human resources to build the health workforce of the future, achieve UHC and ultimately deliver for the people.