Committee on Health

The Committee on Health works to promote parliamentary engagement on health, focusing particularly on inequalities and discrimination in access to health. Its work is part of the IPU’s overall commitment to health, and to helping achieve inclusive development and the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

Established in 2025, it builds on the success of the IPU Advisory Group on Health (2006-2025), which among other achievements helped parliaments to implement international commitments on HIV/AIDS, opened up spaces for dialogue on women’s, children’s and adolescents’ health, as well as sexual and reproductive health and rights, and established a monitoring framework for the 2019 IPU resolution Achieving universal health coverage by 2030: The role of parliaments in ensuring the right to health.

The Committee conducts field visits and other activities to learn lessons and formulate recommendations that can be shared with the wider parliamentary community. It also helps design information and training material for parliamentarians.

The Committee meets twice a year, during IPU Assemblies, and its 15 members from national parliaments are all experts in the field. They are elected by the Governing Council for a single four-year term. The Chairperson is elected by the Committee’s members.

At present, 67% of the members of the Committee are women.