79th WHA Individual Statements
There can be no universal health coverage without mental health, and no mental health without suicide prevention. Access to suicide prevention services, crisis support and postvention globally remains profoundly uneven, with the greatest gaps in low and middle-income countries, where over 70% of suicides occur.
The fourth High-Level Meeting declaration commits Member States to ensuring essential medicines, technologies and services for mental health are available in 80% of primary health care facilities by 2030, and to extending financial protection for these services. These commitments must now be operationalised.
We urge Member States to integrate mental health and suicide prevention; to scale up community-based services; and to ensure that financial protection covers mental health care.
We further call for the meaningful inclusion of people with lived experience in the design of UHC reforms.