Your Excellency Shri Mansukh Mandaviya,

Your Excellency Minister Kato,

Excellencies, colleagues and mates,

Namaste.

I thank India for its beneficiant hospitality, and for its visionary management by making well being a precedence of its G20 Presidency.

I additionally congratulate India for its dedication to common well being protection at residence, particularly by Ayushman Bharat, the world’s largest medical insurance scheme.

On Wednesday I had the chance to go to a well being and wellness centre right here in Gujarat, which is offering main care providers to 1000 households.

I used to be particularly impressed by way of telemedicine to offer consultations, with prescriptions supplied on-line and medicines distributed regionally.

This is only one instance of how digital applied sciences are reworking well being, regionally and globally.

I thank India and all G20 international locations to your management in growing the Global Initiative on Digital Health, which we’ll launch formally tomorrow.

This essential initiative will assist the WHO Global Strategy on Digital Health, and amplify different initiatives together with the WHO Global Digital Health Certification Network, which we established earlier this 12 months, with the assist of the European Commission – and I need to use this chance to thank the European Commission.

Digital applied sciences have confirmed potential for delivering well being providers to marginalised teams, for enhancing high quality of care, and for detecting, getting ready for, stopping and responding to well being emergencies, corresponding to COVID-19.

Although COVID-19 is not a worldwide well being emergency, it stays a worldwide well being risk.

Just yesterday, WHO labeled a brand new variant with a lot of mutations, BA.2.86, as a variant beneath monitoring, highlighting as soon as once more the necessity for all international locations to keep up surveillance.

This can be why we’re persevering with the ACT Accelerator, and why we proceed to hunt the assist of G20 international locations for it.

COVID-19 has taught us all an essential lesson: that when well being is in danger, every little thing is in danger.

There are encouraging indicators that the world is studying the painful classes of the pandemic.

Beginning with the Presidency of Saudi Arabia, a relay of discussions led to the institution of the Joint Finance-Health Task Force beneath the Italian Presidency, supported by Indonesia and now India beneath their respective Presidencies.

As you recognize, negotiations on a pandemic accord and amendments to the International Health Regulations are making good progress.

Both processes are important for creating the authorized and operational framework for an inclusive, coherent and equitable world well being safety structure.

In tandem, WHO is main or supporting a number of initiatives to strengthen well being emergency preparedness and response, together with the Pandemic Fund, the WHO Hub for Pandemic and Epidemic Intelligence, the WHO BioHub system, the Global Health Emergency Corps and the Universal Health and Preparedness Review.

Building on the teachings realized from the successes and shortcomings of the ACT Accelerator and different processes together with the G20 and the Johannesburg course of, WHO has developed an idea be aware for an interim mechanism to coordinate well timed and equitable entry to medical countermeasures for epidemic and pandemic threats.

We welcome the constructive discussions that G20 international locations have held right here in Gandhinagar, and I thank India for its management on this.

We encourage you to work with non-G20 international locations to construct and broaden consensus, and we look ahead to establishing the interim mechanism on the earliest alternative.

Let me depart you with 4 requests.

First, I search your dedication for the implementation of the Global Initiative on Digital Health.

Second, I search your dedication to inclusive and consultative dialogue with all Member States on the interim mechanism for medical countermeasures.

Third, I search your continued assist for the Joint Finance-Health Task Force, to finish its work on surge financing and financial vulnerabilities to pandemics, and to proceed the collaboration to deal with different challenges.

And fourth, I search your dedication to negotiating a complete pandemic accord that encompasses all the teachings of the pandemic, in order that we by no means repeat the identical errors once more.

Time is of the essence, with the accord scheduled to be thought-about by the World Health Assembly subsequent 12 months.

My thanks as soon as once more to India, to Prime Minister and to Minister Mandaviya for his or her management, and to all of you to your partnership for a more healthy, safer, fairer world.

I thanks.