Applauding the “spirit of collaboration” amongst South Asian and Indian Ocean island nations as “a valuable takeaway from this pandemic”, Prime Minister Narendra Modi urged Thursday the creation of a regional platform for collating and learning knowledge on the effectiveness of the Covid-19 vaccines, a particular visa scheme for medical doctors and nurses to journey inside the area throughout well being emergencies, and a regional air ambulance settlement for medical contingencies.
Official sources later stated “all countries, including Pakistan, supported the PM’s proposals”. They sought a structured dialogue for regional cooperation on these proposals to take them ahead, sources stated.
Addressing a workshop on ‘Covid-19 Management: Experience, Good Practices and Way Forward’ — it’s being attended by well being leaders, consultants and officers of Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Maldives, Mauritius, Nepal, Pakistan, Seychelles, Sri Lanka and India — the Prime Minister stated: “Today, the hopes of our region and the world are focused on rapid deployment of vaccines. In this too, we must maintain the same cooperative and collaborative spirit.”
“When Covid-19 hit the world last year, many experts voiced special concern about our densely populated region. But, from the very beginning, we all met this challenge with a coordinated response. In March last year, we were the first to come together for recognising the threat and committing to fight it together. Many other regions and groups followed our early example,” he stated.
“We created the Covid-19 Emergency Response Fund to meet the immediate costs of fighting the pandemic. We shared our resources — medicines, PPEs, and testing equipment. And, above all, we shared the most valuable commodity, knowledge, through collaborative training of our health workers. Through webinars, online courses and IT portals, we shared experiences and learned from each other’s best practices in testing, infection control and medical waste management. We developed our own best practices based on what worked best for us. Each one of us contributed immensely to this pooling of knowledge and experience,” he stated.
“This spirit of collaboration is a valuable takeaway from this pandemic. Through our openness and determination, we have managed to achieve one of the lowest fatality rates in the world. This deserves to be applauded,” he stated.
“Over the past year, our health cooperation has already achieved so much. Can we now think of raising our ambition further? Allow me to make some suggestions for your discussions today: Can we consider creating a special visa scheme for our doctors and nurses, so that they can travel quickly within our region during health emergencies, on the request of the receiving country?”.
“Can our Civil Aviation ministries coordinate a regional air ambulance agreement for medical contingencies? Can we create a regional platform for collating, compiling and studying data about the effectiveness of Covid-19 vaccines among our populations? Can we similarly create a regional network for promoting technology-assisted epidemiology, for preventing future pandemics?” he stated.
The Prime Minister additionally urged that the nations share profitable public well being insurance policies and schemes. “From India, our Ayushman Bharat and Jan Arogya schemes may be useful case-studies for our friends in the region. Such collaboration can become the pathway for greater regional cooperation among us in other areas too. After all, we share so many common challenges – climate change, natural disasters, poverty, illiteracy, and social and gender imbalances. But we also share the power of centuries-old cultural and people-to-people linkages. If we focus on all that unites us, our region can overcome not only the present pandemic, but our other challenges too,” he stated.
If the twenty first Century is to be the Asian Century, he stated, it can’t be with out higher integration amongst South Asian and Indian Ocean island nations. “The spirit of regional solidarity that you have shown during the pandemic has proven that such integration is possible,” he stated.
Sources stated all nations, barring Pakistan which has not acquired India-manufactured vaccines, thanked India and the Prime Minister for the provision of vaccines, medicines, gear and coaching.
“All agreed that there was a need for such cooperation on regional basis to fight such pandemics,” sources stated.
