The President’s Speech during the UN Hight-Level Meeting on universal health coverage held in New York : Ladies and Gentlemen, Heads of State and Government, Mr. President of the General Assembly, Mr. Secretary-General of the United Nations, Mr. Director-General of the World Health Organization, Ladies and Gentlemen, It gives me great pleasure to join you today in the discussions on universal health coverage, at a time when half of the world's population still suffers from a lack of access to basic and appropriate health services, which is detrimental to our collective efforts to achieve the third Sustainable Development Goal of ensuring healthy lives, and in particular to achieve the subsidiary goal of achieving universal health coverage. Therefore, all governments and development partners must work together to find prompt and comprehensive solutions to promote Primary Health Care (PHC) as one of the fundamental human rights to a decent life. In this context, I would like to emphasize that all efforts carried out to provide universal health coverage will only achieve comprehensive results through providing access to medicine and health technology, and establishing partnerships and alliances between governments, companies and nternational institutions to ensure access for all to safe and effective medicines, as well as through strengthening international cooperation frameworks in response to emergencies and health crises. In this regard, I would like to express appreciation for the future five-year vision of the World Health Organization (2019-2023), which seeks to universalizing health coverage for all and without exception. Ladies and Gentlemen, In recent years, Egypt has put the citizens’ health on top of its priorities. We have launched the “100 Million Healthy Lives” Campaign for the screening of viral hepatitis C and noncommunicable diseases. This campaign has managed to successfully examine nearly 60 million people in less than one year, and provided treatments free of charge through government health centers nationwide to more than a million people who had been diagnosed with HIV, all of which were praised by the World Health Organization (WHO) in the report issued by its Verification team, which was presented to me by the Director of the Organization during our meeting in Cairo at the end of last August. We have already started implementing the first phase of the Universal Health Coverage Program which is intended to serve all Egyptian citizens. We have undertaken several initiatives in this direction, including “ending the waiting list for urgent surgical procedures”, that served 250,000 patients, as well as campaigns aimed at highlighting the health problems faced by women and children in Egypt, particularly through the “Egyptian Women's Health” Initiative. We also launched an initiative to “diagnose and treat newborns suffering from hearing impairments and hearing loss”, and a campaign for “detecting obesity, anemia and stunting in schools”. Ladies and gentlemen, Our commitment to health issues has not been limited to the national level, but has spread to our African continent as one of our priorities during our African Union chairmanship. We are currently working to mainstream the “100 Million Healthy Lives” Initiative in other African countries in collaboration with the World Health Organization, as part of of the AU’s Agenda for Development 2063. Our gathering today is a new opportunity to reaffirm the international commitment to promote universal health coverage worldwide, in line with the principle of sustainable economic and social development rather than relying on donations and aids. This will only be achieved through the coordination of efforts at the international level. The adoption of the political declaration of our meeting today is a turning point in the ongoing international efforts to achieve universal health coverage for all peoples and communities.