Ladies and Gentlemen, 

Good morning. I am very pleased to be here at today’s event. I congratulate the Ministry of Public Health for launching the Health Economic Exchange Forum.  

USAID is proud to have supported the development of the Forum through the Health Policy Project. The Health Economics Exchange Forum is a dynamic resource for sharing and communicating with policy makers, researchers, NGOs, and members of civil society. It provides an innovative new mechanism that will enhance the technical capacity of the Ministry through peer-to-peer information exchange and collaboration. This digital meeting space will promote informed decision making on health economics and financing in Afghanistan and the Eastern Mediterranean region. 

Given the challenges related to financing for the health sector in Afghanistan, USAID hopes that the Forum will serve as a space to draw on lessons learned from other countries that will lead to improvements in health financing in Afghanistan.

USAID is pleased to support the successful launch of the Forum and challenges all stakeholders to use the platform to share knowledge to promote utilization of best practices to address health system constraints.

We hope to see this Health Economic Exchange Forum catalyze a wider global discussion on health economics and financing and to serve as a knowledge management hub to facilitate collaboration across the Eastern Mediterranean region.

I wish you all the best for the successful implementation of the Health Economic Exchange Forum  – it will only work if we all commit to utilizing it.