LEARN Lao PDR - Speech EU Ambassador to Lao PDR, H.E. Mr Léon Faber at the National Health Research Forum

I am honoured to be here to say a few words. The EU is proud to be part of this overall adventure of strengthening of institutes like LaoTPHI. That is our contribution. And it has been done mainly through what we call the LEARN project, which is the Lao Equity though policy Analysis and Research Networks (LEARN). This is implemented through an international consortium. And we are very proud to be able to do that.

Over the last 4 ½ years, there have been several significant achievements, and I like to mention a few. Most of all the establishment of the first International Masters of Public Health program in Laos PDR under which currently 20 students are involved. There are 4 post-doctoral and 4 PhD candidates who are currently undertaking that their research with technical support from the Vrije University of Amsterdam. There is also the formulation of the National Health Research Agenda, aiming to ensure that all health research is contributing to an evidence based health policy development and implementation. In addition, there is the development of a Knowledge Translation Strategy that is important to help researchers to better communicate their findings to policy makers and to use these research data for health policy development and implementation.

We know, the very strong link between last year’s topics of the National Health Research Forum and this year’s Forum. Last year was mainly discussing the ‘Universal Health Coverage’ and ‘Nutrition’, while this year the forum is focusing on ‘Quality of Health Care’, as the vice minister already explained. I think these are very important topics which are closely linked.

There has been a significant expansion of the National Health Insurance in the Lao PDR, where now almost 90% of the population is covered by the National Health Insurance. This is very closely linked to the improvement of the health care services and it is impressing to make progress on that.

Both university of health care and quality of health care services are keep being priorities of the social economic development plan and the health sector reform strategy of the Lao PDR. And these are, as already mentioned, very much in line with the sustainable development goals.

We observe also how this National Health Research Forum has evolved, from a national platform to a regional platform, where policy makers, health care practitioners and experts from other Asian countries come to discuss and exchange ideas and research findings.

As the Lao Government is currently in the process of drafting the new NSEDP and the Health Sector Development Plan this is a unique opportunity to use the findings and the recommendations from the research and brought into the health policies. This will enable a new health policy and practice rooted in evidence and contribute to better services for the Lao people.

As what I said in the beginning we are of course happy that this is the 5^th time that the European Union is supporting this annual forum and we would like to thank you all and wish you a fruitful discussion in the next few days.

Thank you.