New Year Address to Staff at SEARO, 31 December 2007, WHO/SEARO, New Delhi

New Year Address to Staff at SEARO By Dr Samlee Plianbangchang Regional Director, WHO South-East Asia At WHO/SEARO, New Delhi 31 December 2007 New Year Address to Staff at SEARO 31 December 2007 WHO/SEARO, New Delhi DR SAM LEE PLIANBANGCHANG REGIONAL DIRECTOR, WHO SOUTH-EAST ASIA Colleagues, Another year is passing us. We are at the passing time of the year. We are moving from 2007 to 2008. All of us worked hard during the past year to serve our Member States. We did our best to ensure our relevance and effectiveness. I am sure our Member States appreciate what we have done for them. They appreciate our contribution to their development efforts. We worked as a team – as the WHO SEA Regional Team. Each one of us has been an important part of the SEARO machinery in pushing forward WHO’s work in the Region. As head of the Regional Office, I sincerely thank you all for your hard work, commitment and dedication during the past year. Without good teamwork we would not have been successful in implementing the WHO programmes. Now, we are moving into 2008 - another challenging year! We will have more budget to implement, especially voluntary contributions (VC). As we all know, implementing programmes supported with VC is difficult. To fulfil our obligation of implementing the 2008-2009 Programme Budget, we need to be more efficient and more effective. Soon, our management will be affected by the introduction of the GSM. We can hope for a positive impact of GSM on our management. We need reorientation and training, in order to get familiar with this system, including its operational modalities. At the same time, we have to ensure continuity of implementation of our biennial workplans. Very importantly, we have to move down to the country level to help implement the country plans of action or workplans. All of us, both professional and support staff, have to help our country offices. Each one of us has a role to play in supporting the country offices. 2 Back-up to countries in areas of administration and finance is no less important than technical support. Actually, country offices need vigorous backing from the Regional Office in respect of management and logistics. At the same time, we have to strengthen our own capacity at the Regional Office. I will ensure that our SDL activities are intensified with the focus on GS staff. To a certain extent, professional staff also need to have competence and skills in management, especially in relation to programme development and implementation. Moreover, because of budget limitation, we cannot recruit additional staff. We will therefore have to use our available resources, optimally. The principle of using “core staff” and “temporary staff” will be applied progressively. I have asked CDS to convene brainstorming sessions to generate the draft generic profiles of “core staff” and “temporary staff”. We need to have a concrete programme for capacity development of core staff, in particular. The induction programme for new staff, both “fixed” and “temporary”, will be further improved. All in all, we will have to make sure that each one of us works more efficiently and effectively in coping with the added workload in 2008. During the past year, we had many meetings and travel. I am sure many of us will agree that a large number of those meetings and the travel involved therein were really not relevant or useful. Let us reduce the number of meetings and the related travel in 2008. Let us do less, but with high quality. We should focus more attention on strengthening country capacity, as well as on country training. We should also ensure training of critical mass of health staff in various areas in countries. It is time now for us to resolve that we will think better, and do better in performing our functions in the coming year. We will maintain the high level of our dedication and commitment to the work of our Organization. We will collectively ensure that the work of WHO in the South-East Asia Region will be more vibrant, progressive and successful in 2008. Let us also resolve to work together peacefully, harmoniously, and cooperatively. Let us resolve to further strengthen WHO’s credibility and reputation in the SEA Region. 3 I now wish all staff members in the Region, both here in the Regional Office and in countries, and their families a very happy and prosperous New Year. All the best and all success to you all in the coming year. Thank you.