Speech by Dr Adham Ismail, officer in charge WHO Eastern Mediterranean: The Strategic Kick-off Meeting on Jordan’s Human Resources for Health Charter

08 September 2026

Your Royal Highness Princess Muna Al Hussein,

Your Royal Highness Princess Zein bint Al Hussein,

Your Excellencies, Ambassadors and

Distinguished colleagues and friends,

Sixty-four years ago, the first college of nursing in this country opened its doors - founded by Your Royal Highness.

So let us be clear about what is happening in this room today.

Jordan did not start caring about its health workforce this morning. Jordan has been building it for six decades - and exporting that excellence to every country in our Region.

What is new today is this: for the first time, Jordan is putting that commitment into one national compact.

Let me tell you why the world should be watching.

Our Region is home to 10 per cent of the world's people. By 2030, we are projected to carry 20 per cent of the world's health workforce shortage.

Across our countries, the density of doctors, nurses and midwives ranges from 8 to 108 per 10 000 people. That is not a gap. That is a chasm.

In nursing, we have the second lowest density on earth - 15.5 nurses per 10 000 people, against a global average of 37.

Jordan's own 2023 Health Labour Market Analysis was honest about the work ahead: fragmented governance, uneven distribution across governorates and specialties, training that outpaces absorption, and workforce data too weak to plan on.

Not one of those can be fixed by health alone. Not by education alone. Not by finance or labour alone.

That is exactly what a Charter is for.

This is why our Region has placed investment in a resilient health workforce among its flagship priorities.

Its premise breaks with the past. Health workers are not a cost line to be contained. They are an investment to be grown.

Every one US dollar invested in health and job creation returns up to nine.

A health worker is a job. A household. A taxpayer. A community that stays.

So when Jordan invests in its workforce, Jordan is not spending on health. Jordan is building an economy.

Jordan is now writing its National Health Strategy. This Charter should not be an annex to that strategy. It should be built into its first page.

Because every ambition in it - universal health coverage, primary health care, quality, health security, digital transformation - comes down to one question: is there a trained, supported, motivated human being present when a patient walks through the door?

Your Royal Highness, at the World Health Assembly in 2020 you told the world that "applause without action is no longer acceptable".

That sentence travelled the globe. Today, Jordan answers it.

In a few minutes we will sign a Commitment Wall. Signatures are the easy part. What must follow is harder - budget lines, curricula reformed, posts created in the governorates that need them most, and young Jordanian professionals given a reason to build their careers here, at home.

WHO will stand with Jordan through all of it - technically and politically, from Amman and from Cairo.

Let us make this the Charter that other countries come to Jordan to learn from.

Thank you.