Good morning and warm greetings to all distinguished participants.
It is a pleasure to join you today from the WHO Regional Office for South-East Asia. I would like to thank Member States, WHO Country Offices, partners, and our speakers for coming together for this timely regional dialogue on creating age-friendly environments.
In October 2025, Member States of the WHO South-East Asia Region adopted the Colombo Declaration on Healthy Ageing through Strengthened Primary Health Care — an important milestone reflecting our shared commitment to ensure that people can age with dignity, independence, and purpose. The Declaration clearly recognizes that healthy ageing cannot be achieved by the health sector alone. It calls for coordinated action across housing, transport, social protection, urban development, and community systems, with strong emphasis on multisectoral leadership and local implementation.
Age-friendly environments directly operationalize this vision. They provide a practical pathway to translate high-level commitments into tangible improvements in everyday living — enabling safer mobility, greater social participation, accessible services, and inclusive communities for older persons. In this sense, age-friendly environments are not stand-alone initiatives; they are strategic enablers of people-centred, integrated services across the life course.
The Colombo Declaration underscores the critical role of local governments and communities in driving change. Communities like cities, municipalities, or villages are where policies meet people. Their leadership, supported by national frameworks and multisectoral partnerships, is essential for achieving scale and sustainability.
WHO remains committed to supporting Member States through normative guidance, the Global Network for Age-Friendly Cities and Communities, and regional platforms for implementation learning. Our collective challenge now is to move from pilots to systems, and from isolated projects to embedded policy approaches.
Today’s webinar offers an opportunity to learn from practical experiences in Western Australia, Kerala State, including Shoranur Municipality, and Thailand. These examples demonstrate how political commitment, cross-sector collaboration, and community engagement can advance age-friendly action in diverse contexts.
I encourage all participants to use today’s dialogue to strengthen national and local frameworks, identify opportunities for collaboration, and advance the commitments set out in the Colombo Declaration.
Ahead of today's conversation, my appreciation and thanks to all speakers for joining us today. I look forward to a productive exchange and, most importantly, to concrete follow-up actions emerging from today’s discussions. Thank you.