New Delhi: India will showcase a slew of health programmes, including its flagships Ayushman Bharat, Nikshay — a web-enabled TB patient management system — and Jan Ausadhi, a programme to make generic drugs popular and accessible, during the year-long G20 presidency, the central health minister said Thursday.
India’s management of the Covid pandemic and the lessons learnt will also be a part of its presentations to the G20 health-working groups (HWGs). The G20 countries collectively account for 90 percent of the world’s GDP, 75 to 80 percent of international trade, a third of the globe’s total land area and two-thirds of its population.
Spelling out priorities set for India’s presidency, Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya said: “Prevention, preparedness and response to health emergencies, including initiatives like One Health and tackling antimicrobial resistance, have been priorities since the initiation of the HWGs in G20. They will continue to be so. Our second priority is cooperation between these countries in the pharmaceutical sector to ensure accessible, available and affordable medicines, vaccines and diagnostics. The third priority will be universal health coverage and improvement of health service delivery.”
Identifying priorities for discussion and consensus during the meetings of the various working groups is the prerogative of the country holding the presidency but the final draft statement is drawn up only after detailed discussions. The priorities are also selected keeping in mind continuity from earlier goals.
The last president of the grouping was Indonesia and the priorities that were selected during 2021-2022 were the harmonisation of health protocol for cross-border travel, building global health resilience and expansion of global manufacturing hubs to low- and middle-income countries for pandemic preparedness.
Four meetings of the health working group are slated to happen over the next few months. The first meeting in Thiruvananthapuram will take place between 18-20 January with a side event on medical value travel.
The second meeting in Goa will focus on digital health. It will happen from 17 to 19 April. The third meeting is scheduled to take place in Hyderabad between 4-6 June. It will also have a workshop on research to expand access to drugs, diagnostics and vaccines.
The fourth meeting, which will be the meeting of G20 health ministers, will take place in Gandhinagar. It will also have side events on the Global Centre for Traditional Medicine and Medical Value Travel.
The 3 flagships
While India will work with G20 partners on all three priorities and the showcase health and pharmaceutical programmes will have a very strong digital health component.
Nikshay has been India’s one-stop portal for management and follow-up of TB patients and is also a goalkeeper for India’s aim to eliminate the disease by 2025 — five years ahead of the global deadline.
Launched in 2018, Ayushman Bharat on the other hand is an embodiment of the second priority of making healthcare affordable, accessible and available. The programme has two components: under the Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana, every eligible family is provided an annual health coverage of Rs 5 lakh while under the tertiary healthcare arm 153,000 health and wellness centres are being set up across the country.
Jan Ausadhi is a scheme of the ministry of pharmaceuticals that was launched in 2008 with the goal of making quality generic medicines available to all. It has since been renamed the Pradhan Mantri Bharatiya Jan Ausadhi Pariyojana. According to information available on its website, there were 8,819 functional “jan ausadhi” stores selling 1,759 drugs and 280 surgical items till October 2022.
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