All three health priorities of India’s G20 presidency find a mention in the G20 New Delhi Leaders’ Declaration released on Saturday. These are building a resilient healthcare system; creating a platform for improving access to medical countermeasures such as vaccines, diagnostics, and therapeutics across the world; and creating a platform for sharing digital goods between countries. The declaration states: “(We will) support the WHO-led inclusive consultative process for the development of an interim medical countermeasures coordination mechanism … considering a network of networks approach, leveraging local and regional RnD and manufacturing capacities, and strengthening last mile delivery.” This consultative process will include voices of low- and middle-income countries. The platform “may be adapted in alignment with” the pandemic treaty. The declaration states that the G20 will look forward to a successful outcome of the ongoing negotiations for a legally binding convention of agreement on pandemic prevention, preparedness, and response. The pandemic treaty is likely to be presented in the upcoming World Health Assembly. The declaration agrees on a “WHO-managed framework to build a comprehensive digital health ecosystem in compliance with respective data protection regulations”. It commits to strengthening the global health architecture to build more resilient, equitable, sustainable, and inclusive health systems “with the WHO at its core”. To do so, the declaration agrees on strengthening primary healthcare, health workforce, and essential health services to better than pre-pandemic levels — ideally within the next two to three years. In addition to its focus on ongoing epidemics such as tuberculosis and AIDS, the G20 also recognised the importance of research on long Covid. The declaration notes the need to promote access to mental health and psychosocial support services. It stresses the importance of a one-health approach — where diseases in animals, plants, and humans are tracked by the same mechanism — with focus on tackling anti-microbial resistance. The document talks of enhancing not just climate-resilient healthcare systems but also low carbon systems. Besides health systems, the declaration draws attention to the need for financing of health initiatives. It states, “We remain committed to strengthening the global health architecture for pandemic prevention, preparedness and response (PPR) through enhanced collaboration between Finance and Health Ministries under the Joint Finance and Health Task Force.” The G20 called on the task force that created the Framework on Economic Vulnerabilities and Risks and the initial Report for Economic Vulnerabilities to continue refining this framework over its multi-year work plan to regularly assess economic vulnerabilities and risks due to evolving pandemic threats. It welcomed mapping of pandemic response financing options and gaps to see how financing mechanisms could be optimised, better coordinated, and suitably enhanced to deploy the necessary financing quickly and efficiently.
