Prepare for next health emergency, share tech to close gap: PM to G20

“Resilience has turned out to be one of the biggest learnings of this time. Global health systems should also be resilient. We must be ready to prevent, prepare and respond to the next health emergency. This is especially important in today’s interconnected world. As we saw during the pandemic, health issues in one part of the world can affect all other parts of the world in a very short time,” he said.

“Digital solutions and innovations are a useful means to make our efforts equitable and inclusive. Patients from far and wide can receive quality care through tele-medicine. India’s national platform, e-Sanjeevani, has facilitated 140 million tele-health consultations till date. India’s COWIN platform successfully facilitated the largest vaccination drive in human history. It managed the delivery of more than 2.4 billion vaccine doses, and real-time availability of globally verifiable vaccination certificates,” he said.

The Global Initiative on Digital Health, Modi said, will bring together various digital health initiatives on a common platform. “Let us open our innovations for public good. Let us avoid duplication of funding. Let us facilitate equitable availability of technology. This initiative will allow countries in the Global South to close the gap in healthcare delivery. It will take us one step closer to our goal of achieving Universal Health Coverage.”

Public participation, he said, is a key factor in the success of health initiatives. “It was one of the main reasons for the success of our leprosy eradication campaign. Our ambitious programme on TB elimination also encourages public participation. We have called upon  the people of the country to become Ni-kshay Mitras, or ‘’Friends for eradication of TB’. Under this, nearly 1 million patients have been adopted by citizens. Now, we are on our way to achieve TB elimination well ahead of the global target of 2030,” he said.

The platform proposed by India to be housed at the World Health Organisation aims to create a repository of existing health technologies in various countries that can be adapted and utilised by others. The consensus on creating the platform and a fund to support it is yet to be reached, with the final outcome document of the meeting likely Saturday. The meeting was attended by Health Ministers of around 14 of the 20 countries in the grouping.