19 MAY 2026

Your Excellency Dr Fahad Abdulrahman Al-Jalajel, Minister of Health of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia,

Distinguished colleagues and partners,

Supply chains may not be the most visible part of global health but when they fail, everything else fails with them. That is why this conversation belongs here, at the World Health Assembly, where decisions with real operational consequences are made.

COVID-19 exposed major vulnerabilities in global supply chains, vulnerabilities that have since been compounded by conflict, economic instability and disruptions across our Region.

Countries with integrated, digitally enabled procurement and supply systems were far better positioned to respond. The lesson is that resilience cannot be improvised during a crisis. It must be built in advance.

This is why WHO launched the Regional Flagship Initiative on Expanding Equitable Access to Medical Products, endorsed by the WHO Regional Committee for the Eastern Mediterranean. The Initiative supports countries in moving from reactive supply management to resilient systems grounded in stronger regulation, modernized supply chains, and expanded local production.

Three pillars are especially important.

The first is regulatory strengthening. Progress across the Region is tangible. Six countries are undertaking WHO regulatory benchmarking. Saudi Arabia achieved WHO Maturity Level 4 in 2024 and is advancing towards WHO-Listed Authority designation a regional first. Egypt has reached Maturity Level 3 for both medicines and vaccines as a producing country. Morocco, Tunisia and the UAE have established autonomous regulatory agencies. And the North African Medicines Regulatory Harmonization initiative, launched in 2025, is advancing regional convergence.

The second pillar is pooled procurement and market shaping. WHO has been laying the foundation for a regional pooled procurement mechanism in collaboration with the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), supported by a regional platform and priority product lists. This is already translating into practical gains. Countries in our Region have used the WHO Collaborative Registration Procedure to fast-track approvals of prequalified products in Jordan, Pakistan, Qatar, Tunisia and Yemen. Affordability gains are also becoming visible through engagement at the Global Fair Pricing Forum and vaccine pricing work in Jordan. The architecture for more coordinated and equitable purchasing is steadily taking shape.

The third pillar is strategic warehousing and supply chain infrastructure. Jordan offers a strong example of what targeted investment can deliver: a strategic central warehouse, expanded cold chain capacity, digitalized logistics and a dedicated transport system that together increased storage capacity by around 50%, reduced stockouts by 30%, and cut delivery times to remote areas by up to 40%. In Iraq, WHO supported the rollout of a digital warehouse management system in the Kurdistan Region to strengthen stock monitoring and distribution. These are not pilot projects. They are system reforms with measurable outcomes.

As countries move forward, three priorities must continue to guide us: governance clarity, because resilient systems depend on clear mandates and accountability under pressure; real-time visibility across the supply chain, from manufacturing to last-mile delivery; and diversification away from single-source dependencies.

To the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and to NUPCO thank you for sharing your experience openly and for demonstrating that the distance between policy and practice can be closed.

WHO remains committed to supporting Member States in building supply systems that are resilient, equitable and capable of protecting populations when they need it most.