The G20 Health Ministers’ meeting under held during 17-19 August in Gandhinagar, Gujarat, explored three key priorities areas: health emergencies prevention preparedness, strengthening cooperation in the pharmaceutical sector, and digital health innovations.
The Gandhinagar meeting also hosted four side events on: One Earth One Health Advantage Health Care – India 2023; WHO Traditional Medicine Global Summit; India MedTech Expo 2023; and ‘Sustain, Accelerate and Innovate to End TB in South-East Asia Region’ Conference.
Mint takes a look at the event and its impact on India’s delivery of public healthcare going ahead.
# Why are addressing health emergencies, strengthening of pharma sector and digital health innovation priority areas?
These three priorities and their related deliverables have the potential to make global healthcare services more accessible and affordable, especially for people in vulnerable situations and those in low-and middle-income countries. Hence, health emergencies prevention preparedness and response has been a core priority in every G20 Health Working Group which puts special focus on the critical threats of One Health, Anti-microbial resistance (AMR) and climate change.
To strengthen the pharmaceutical sector, there is a need to ensure equitable access to affordable medical countermeasures that envisions the establishment of research & development (R&D) and manufacturing networks across the globe. This will further enable access to quality and affordable vaccines, therapeutics, and diagnostics (VTDs), especially for the most vulnerable around the world, particularly those in the Global South.
The Global Initiative for Digital Health (GIDH) aims to ensure that existing and ongoing digital health efforts can be made accessible under one umbrella seeking high level international cooperation.
#Why was traditional medication given importance during G20 meeting?
During the covid-19 crisis, traditional medicines had played a key role, along with scientific and evidence-based medicine, in terms of preventive, therapeutic and public health management. The G20 event saw WHO Global Summit on Traditional Medicine where Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General, appreciated India’s role in promoting the use of traditional medicines and hoped that this first-ever summit will be a catalyst in bringing together modern science and traditional knowledge in making health systems better.
The Indian government belives that integration of traditional medicine with modern medicine would contribute to advancing healthcare system attributes related to quality, efficiency, equity, accountability, sustainability and resilience.
# What is the importance of Digital health initiatives?
The launch of The Global Initiative for Digital Health (GIDH) is a key deliverable to aid universal health coverage & improve healthcare service delivery’ under India’s G20 Presidency. GIDH will consolidate evidence and amplify recent and past gains in global digital health for health systems while strengthening mutual accountability to enhance the impact of future investments.
The GIDH will be a WHO-managed network that will promote equitable access to digital health by addressing challenges such as duplication of efforts and “products-focused” digital health transformation. Meanwhile, India is keen to sharing the learning of its mammoth effort for establishing a comprehensive digital health ecosystem through the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission (ABDM) with the world.
# What was discussed to strengthen the pharmaceutical sector?
One of the side events, India MedTech Expo 2023, emphasized the need to promote manufacturing of medical devices in the country through greater investment, research, collaboration between industry and academia and promoting startups to be self-sufficient.
It was flagged that India has been importing 70 – 80% of medical devices despite having a long history of manufacturing medical devices. It also explored ways and means to bring policymakers and industry experts’ closer collaboration and build partnerships between industry and academia in medtech sector.