India’s G20 presidency is gathering momentum. It is focussed on harnessing shared duties and collaborative governance to make the world safer from pandemics. India is searching for to leverage this discussion board to bridge the hole between the Global North and Global South, particularly as a result of the G20 and a number of other different plurilateral preparations have memberships that minimize throughout the worldwide neighborhood.

The Covid-19 pandemic has affirmed that well being is a worldwide public good. It has additionally underlined the crucial position of the State in shaping and delivering a public well being imaginative and prescient, particularly as a result of market forces usually fail to deal with the medical wants of individuals, notably the poorest and probably the most weak, in full measure. The pandemic additionally highlighted the centrality of the World Health Organisation (WHO) in shaping the contours of responses to illness outbreaks.

The blueprint framed within the course of can apply to nationwide governments and multilateral establishments such because the G20. Its crucial parts embody serving to international locations to reply promptly, offering correct info, making certain very important provides attain frontline healthcare employees, coaching and mobilising medical professionals and creating and delivering vaccines, diagnostics, and therapeutics.

India demonstrated a whole-of-society and whole-of-government strategy in coping with Covid. The devastating first and second waves intensified nationwide solidarity and led to elevated give attention to medical care and vaccine analysis, manufacturing, and rollout. With Covid reworking from a well being emergency to a illness that’s prone to be with us, albeit in a much less virulent kind, the main target has shifted to reviving and rebuilding the financial system, schooling and social companies in addition to caring for individuals who endure long-Covid and absolutely operationalising the non-Covid important well being companies.

A yr into the pandemic, the World Bank arrange an umbrella programme to assist some international locations and areas enhance their capacities to organize for, stop, reply, and mitigate the affect of epidemics on individuals. India and a number of other different members of G20 and the Global South are part of this effort.

In January 2022, the one hundred and fiftieth assembly of the WHO’s govt board dedicated to strengthening the Health Emergency Preparedness and Response (HEPR) structure. The well being emergency administration ecosystem has moved past coping with threats from infections and brought an all-hazards perspective. The core values of managing such emergencies embody fairness in entry and outcomes, inclusivity of possession and engagement and coherence in financing, governance, and constitutional mandates. The foundational necessities, due to this fact, embody inter-sectoral coordination (financial, social, agricultural, environmental) and a “One Health” strategy with whole-of-government and whole-of-society responses.

There is a rising recognition and fear that the world is off observe in its journey in the direction of Universal Health Coverage (UHC) by 2030 on account of an absence of concrete operational steps and insufficient public financing. The classes from the general public well being response to the Covid pandemic and the improvements that got here up through the interval, resembling digital well being applied sciences and community-based companies, are being drawn upon to strengthen and scale up main healthcare approaches for progressive realisation of UHC. India is working additional time to realize the milestone by way of innovation and collaboration, particularly on 4 SDGs: No Poverty, Zero Hunger, Good Health and Wellbeing, and Gender Equality.

Strengthening main healthcare is essential to the roadmap forward for well being emergencies. India’s G20 presidency would facilitate synergy with the WHO’s 10 “bold proposals” for a extra secure and equitable world. Effective and well timed strengthening of HEPPR would require deepening the settlement and convergence amongst stakeholders. The theme of India’s G20 presidency — “One Earth, One Family, One Future” — is in that spirit.

The three pillars of HEPR are governance, collaboration, and financing. India has performed key roles and demonstrated political dedication in a number of the current initiatives on strengthening world well being governance — these embody the Intergovernmental Negotiating Body (INB) for the pandemic treaty, the Muscat Manifesto on AMR in Oman (2022), and the Friends of Medical Countermeasures Platform in South Africa (2023). The operational readiness of 5 interconnected multi-sectoral HEPR techniques — collaborative surveillance, neighborhood safety, secure and scalable care, entry to countermeasures, and emergency coordination — is one other precedence space that India’s G20 presidency is specializing in.

G20 has already contributed to the WHO and World Bank Pandemic Fund that was launched through the Indonesia presidency in November 2022. The Fund has secured greater than $1.6 billion in donations, principally from G20 members, and can strengthen the HEPR in a number of international locations of the Global South.

India is engaged carefully with Japan’s G7 presidency and Prime Minister Modi will take part within the G7 Hiroshima Summit. The Hiroshima G7 Global Health Task Force is in synergy with these aims. Two of its most important themes are Resilient, Equitable and Sustainable UHC and Global Health Architecture Development. The phrases of Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida is a reminder of our shared duties: “I believe that human security remains critical to strengthen the global capacity to prevent, prepare for, and respond to public health emergencies and contribute to achieving UHC.” They discover a harmonious resonance within the phrases of Prime Minister Modi: “Our priorities will focus on healing our one earth, creating harmony within our one family and giving hope for our one future”.

The author is Secretary, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, GoI. Views expressed are private

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