G20 needs to aid in increasing available funds to WHO: Mansukh Mandaviya at G20 Joint meet

Union Health and Family Welfare Minister Mansukh Mandaviya on Friday said that G20 needs to aid in increasing available funds to World Health Organization (WHO) with a specific focus on equitable and affordable access.

As per an official statement, the Union Minister while addressing G20 Joint Finance and Health Ministers' meeting said that "in a pandemic no one is safe until everyone is safe."

The Agenda of the discussion was "Concrete proposals to strengthen global health financing governance", according to the government release.

"G20 needs to aid in increasing available funds to WHO, primarily funds that are not ear-marked besides supporting ongoing multistakeholder mechanisms such as GAVI, CEPI, ACT-A with specific focus on equitable and affordable access," he said adding that "in a pandemic no one is safe until everyone is safe."

In the meeting, the Union Minister said: "COVID-19 pandemic has brought to fore the importance of International Health Regulations and the need for strengthening global health governance."

At present, several parallel proposals are being discussed in multiple forums including IPPPR's Global Health Threats Council, IHR review, need for a framework, convention or any other instrument on pandemic management and G20 proposal of Joint Health and Financing Task force to strengthen pandemic preparedness and response, the Union Minister said further.

Supporting the present proposal for Joint Health and Financing Task force, he said that India proposes that centrality of WHO needs to be maintained in health arena.

"India also proposes that while multiple entities with overlapping mandates are delving on the issue of pandemic preparedness and response, a clearly defined complementarity of all such initiatives being seamlessly woven to create a global health emergency management architecture is the need of hour," Mandaviya said.

The Minister further noted that there is also a need to synchronise these multilateral initiatives amongst member states as per their local context at national level.

Quoting Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Mandaviya said: "In this context, I quote our Hon'ble Prime Minister Modi when he mentioned that 'Everyone's support, everyone's development, everyone's trust and everyone's efforts' are vital for success."

He added that India would like to congratulate Italian Presidency's efforts towards strengthening global health financing and its governance."

( With inputs from ANI )

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