{"id":49209,"date":"2022-06-07T18:53:00","date_gmt":"2022-06-08T01:53:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/?p=49209"},"modified":"2022-06-08T08:53:41","modified_gmt":"2022-06-08T15:53:41","slug":"secretary-antony-j-blinken-remarks-at-the-economic-and-health-dialogue-of-the-americas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/?p=49209","title":{"rendered":"Secretary Antony J. Blinken Remarks at the Economic and Health Dialogue of the Americas"},"content":{"rendered":"
06\/07\/2022 07:54 PM EDT<\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

Antony J. Blinken, Secretary of State<\/p>\n

Los Angeles, California<\/p>\n

Millennium Biltmore Hotel<\/p>\n

SECRETARY BLINKEN:<\/b>\u00a0 Well, I parachuted into the middle, so my apologies.\u00a0 (Laughter.)\u00a0 But I really did want to stop by.\u00a0 This is the very beginning of the Summit of the Americas, and it seems like this is a very important way to start.\u00a0 And Jose, thank you for bringing everyone together this afternoon.<\/p>\n

Not only am I pleased to be here, I\u2019m just pleased to see so much solidarity among all of our colleagues and all of our neighbors for what is I think a very important initiative.\u00a0 To state the obvious, we all know the devastating impact that COVID-19 has had on virtually all of our communities.\u00a0 No part of the world has been harder hit than our own, and this is something that we have had to experience together.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve been committed in the United States to doing everything we can to help get through COVID and get to a better place.\u00a0 We\u2019ve had the opportunity to provide nearly 70 million vaccine doses in our own hemisphere through COVAX, making sure that there was appropriate and equitable distribution.\u00a0 We\u2019re on our way globally over time to provide 1.2 billion doses of vaccines, again, mostly through COVAX to make sure that this is done in the most effective, equitable way possible.<\/p>\n

But I think we also know, as we\u2019re dealing with what remains of COVID, that we have a big challenge not with vaccine production anymore but with getting shots into arms.\u00a0 And so all of us together are working on ways to make sure that we can deal with those challenges \u2013 what we call in the United States the last mile, or maybe the last kilometer, where we have issues of cold chain storage, where we have issues of distribution, we have issues of making sure that our health care workers are supported.\u00a0 All of this we\u2019re working on together.<\/p>\n

But as we do that, I think what\u2019s so important here is that we together learn from this experience and make sure that we strengthen our health care systems going forward.\u00a0 One of the other things that COVID has revealed in our own country as well as in our own hemisphere are serious inequities in the way health care is provided, is distributed, is made available to people.\u00a0 So we want to take that lesson to heart as well.<\/p>\n

I know, Jose, you were starting to discuss or maybe you already have the initiative that brings us together, the Economic and Health Dialogue of the Americas.\u00a0 But I think our ability to exchange experiences, exchange ideas, and work together on strengthening our capacity to deliver basic health care to all of our citizens is one of the most important things we need to do.\u00a0 And as with anything in our shared hemisphere, we know that we\u2019re going to be more effective and stronger if we\u2019re doing it together.\u00a0 And so I really applaud this initiative.\u00a0 I think it will help build a greater political commitment to making sure that we\u2019re addressing some of the gaps that exist in all of our societies when it comes to provision of health care going forward.<\/p>\n

I know President Biden is going to have a chance to speak to this in the coming days.\u00a0 He very much looks forward to that and talking about how we can deepen partnerships across the board in our hemisphere.\u00a0 But I think in this particular instance, simply put, having a platform to share the lessons that we\u2019ve learned together, having a platform where we can come together to strengthen our health systems \u2013 that is going to have a dramatic and powerful impact on the lives of all of our citizens.<\/p>\n

So we know some \u2013 as with so many other things, disease has no respect for borders, and so we have to deal with this together, and I\u2019m glad that with this initiative that\u2019s what we\u2019re doing.\u00a0 So thank you.\u00a0 Thank you for letting me parachute into the meeting.<\/p>\n

UNDER SECRETARY FERNANDEZ:<\/b>\u00a0 You\u2019re always welcome.\u00a0 Great to have you.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

06\/07\/2022 07:54 PM EDT   Antony...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-49209","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-u-s-a"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49209","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=49209"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49209\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49210,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49209\/revisions\/49210"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=49209"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=49209"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=49209"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}