H.E. Vicente Gonzales Loscertales, Secretary General of the International

Exhibitions Bureau,

Distinguished BIE Delegates,

Excellencies,

Distinguished members of the Turkish and foreign press,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

In my position as the Minister of Foreign Affairs and as the Chairman of the Steering Board of EXPO 2015 İzmir, I am very pleased to warmly welcome all of you, our distinguished guests, to our country and especially to İzmir. I am also honored at the opportunity to address such a distinguished audience.

Today is the Opening Session of the First International Symposium on “Health for All – Routes to Well-Being”. As you know, our Prime Minister H.E. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan last night emphasized and concentrated on the special characteristics of and why Turkey, why Izmir would be an appropriate candidate to host EXPO 2015. Therefore, I shall refrain from repeating the same points and focus on the Symposium itself.

This Symposium is the very first event we are organizing within the framework of our efforts to host EXPO 2015 in İzmir. I trust that this event will be productive to all of our distinguished speakers and participants.

This Symposium will give us the opportunity to elaborate only a few headings within the extremely wide spectrum of areas and determinants of health. I believe that there would be a few more occasions to emphasize other aspects of health in due time. And this will be during the course of our activities for EXPO 2015.

With extreme pleasure, we are witnessing the overwhelming endeavors of the EXPO candidates to make all EXPOs a resounding success – by not only benefiting their individual countries, but humanity in general. Hence, I would like to take this opportunity to wish much success to Morocco, Poland and Korea, the candidate countries for EXPO 2012. Also, I would like to wish all the success to our friendly competitor Milan, Italy in our quest and race for EXPO 2015.

The theme of EXPO 2010 in Shanghai will be “Better Cities Better Life”. I was in Sanghay at the beginning of this year. It was quite exciting. Let me indicate that the area allocated to Izmir is as big as Sanghay. The theme of EXPO 2015 İzmir, “Health for All”, will be a natural continuation of the World EXPOs. And the emphasis here is to focus on human life and determinants of health.

Distinguished delegates and participants,

The aim and purpose of “Health for All” can best be described as follows; all individuals throughout the world should have the opportunity and means to maintain a minimum level of health in order to be productive in the workplace and actively participate in the social life of their community. We all are affected by common threats to our health. Therefore, it is vital not to lose sight of the personal consequences of global health challenges. This is why the principles behind “Health for All” are ever valid and essential for all of us.

The main emphasis of the U.N. Millennium Development Goals is also health - a priority in the common agenda of the international community.

The essential prerequisite in reaching most of the Millennium Development Goals, is the appropriate investment in health, which is the cornerstone of economic growth and development. However, there are trade-offs between economic growth and improvement of health as well as environmental protection.

We have to attain the proper balance in highlighting the real challenges of globalization. In a broader sense, when we consider today’s challenges - from environmental protection to conflicts - from poverty to pandemics, this theme becomes even more significant. We need to work in synergy, mobilizing partners and stakeholders in addressing the global challenges, as well as preparing perspective plans to cope with them. Solidarity is crucial when today’s universal vulnerability to challenges are concerned.

With this understanding, our Government has attached high importance to health issues. There has been a significant transformation programme in the health system of Turkey during the last five years. The new strategy was named “Transformation in Health”. And this covers, among others, the facilitation of the access of patients to public and private sector health care providers, performance related payment system for the health workers, e-health system, patient surveillance, family medicine, decentralization in hospital services, national pharmaceutical policy and also reimbursement system, and, last but not the least, universal health insurance. The transformation in health aims at increasing the level of health care services to our people on one hand and providing better conditions for health workers on the other.

The number of health institutions in Turkey has reached to 20 thousand, with the bed capacity of 200 thousand. The number of health workers including physicians, dentists, pharmacists, nurses and midwives is around 280 thousand right now. During the first term of our Government, I also closely followed the developments regarding our revolutionary health reform due to my previous portfolio. Quality and quantity increased tremendously. Patient satisfaction surveys confirmed this fact. Fiscal burdens decreased from 18 % to 8 %. VAT on all hospital and medicine bills were re-arranged. By using the same resources with more optimum policies, Turkey proved that such a success in health policy is possible. It was proved that this can be done in a country of 70 million.

We can only dream of a better future when knowledge is shared and efforts are made to overcome new challenges which threaten the future of humanity.

With this understanding, I sincerely hope that the valuable input attained as a result of this Symposium will contribute in creating concrete proposals to finding viable ways and means to deal with the existing challenges facing us - that is the crucial universal issue of providing safe, adequate and efficient primary health care services to everyone around the world.

It is apparent that this extremely important aim cannot be achieved during the course of the one and a half day Symposium in İzmir. However, it could be the first step in the right direction. The findings of this Symposium may lead to achieving tangible results during the Second International Symposium that we will be organizing on the theme of “Health for All” in February 2008. If İzmir’s candidacy is approved by the General Assembly of the International Exhibitions Bureau at the end of March 2008, we are planning to organize a series of workshops and meetings on several other aspects as well as the determinants of health until April 2015. So, there will be a lot of events following these 2 symposiums to highlight the topic of health.

Distinguished delegates and participants,

Although Turkey is a candidate to host EXPO 2015 in İzmir, this project belongs to everyone – those present here today and those are not. I believe that what we achieve during this Symposium as well as our future activities in this regard, will contribute to the endeavors of the international community in the years to come. Both success and failure will be our common destiny. I trust that we will opt for the former and join hands and make “Health for All” a worldwide success.

We have a very dedicated team. The Government, the Municipality, Governor of İzmir, NGOs in İzmir and the İzmir Chamber of Commerce are all working for this project. It has the full support of our Government, as the central Government, and the İzmir Municipality, as the local government. We will do everything to make this project a success not only for Turkey, but for its global consequences. Because we need health for all…

I wish all of us success in this worthy endeavor. Thank you very much.