Opening remarks by Dr Hanan Balkhy, WHO Regional Director for the Eastern Mediterranean at the 6TH Global Mental Health Summit, Doha 2025 Thematic workshop on Strengthening the[...]

30 September 2025

Distinguished colleagues, partners, and friends,

Thank you for joining us today at this important workshop.

For the first time, the Global Mental Health Summit is dedicating a workshop to substance use disorders-recognizing them as a major public health challenge with far-reaching implications for health, development, and human security.

Last year, 316 million people worldwide used drugs, and in the Eastern Mediterranean Region, prevalence and disability are rising faster than the global average. The consequences are measured not only in statistics but in families fractured, young lives lost, and communities carrying the weight of stigma and neglect.

Substance use and mental health are inseparable. When the two intersect, risks multiply: relapse, hospitalization, premature death. Still, nearly half of countries lack specialized services for people living with both conditions. And too often, those affected are met with punishment rather than care. This must change.

That is why the WHO Eastern Mediterranean Region has made substance use a priority. Our approach rests on three pillars: prevention and health promotion; integrating treatment within universal health coverage; and advancing evidence-based policies in place of punitive measures. Implementation of our flagship initiative has begun through high-level policy dialogues, a regional technical advisory group, and the active engagement of civil society and people with lived experience.

This workshop is an opportunity to build momentum. Together, we will exchange innovations and good practices, explore ways to integrate services across humanitarian and development settings, and consider how investment can accelerate coverage of prevention and treatment. Importantly, the workshop will identify a set of priorities to be incorporated in the Summit's joint declaration.

By investing in innovation, scaling up integrated services, and joining forces across borders, we can replace stigma with support, despair with recovery, and vulnerability with resilience.