Every April 7 since 1950, World Health Day has been celebrated. Today's theme is "Building a fairer, healthier world" for 2021. As South-east Asian countries glimpse a vaccine-shaped light at the end of the Covid-19 tunnel, they must now turn their attention to recovery, which includes building fairer and healthier societies.

Despite being highly diverse in terms of size, wealth, types of government and health outcomes, the region's countries have the same need at this point in their development: a new health-based social contract featuring stronger primary healthcare, improved social determinants of health, and more and fairer taxes.