G20 health ministers’ meet: Outcome Document’s paragraph on Ukraine war classified as ‘chair’s summary’ due to Russia, China objections

PTI

Gandhinagar, August 19

The two-day G20 Health Ministers’ Meeting that concluded here in Gujarat on Saturday saw the unanimous adoption of the ‘Outcome Document’ which reaffirmed the commitment of member countries to continue strengthening the global health architecture.

Owing to the objections raised by both Russia and China, a paragraph on Russia - Ukraine war has been classified as ‘Chair’s Summary’, while the remaining 24 paragraphs became part of the ‘Outcome Document’, which was unanimously adopted by all the member countries, a release said.

The G20 health ministers met in Gandhinagar on August 18 and 19 to discuss major global health priorities and challenges and to reaffirm the group’s commitment to continue strengthening the global health architecture, said the release.

Some of the major outcomes agreed by all the members include potential role of evidence-based traditional and complementary medicines, strengthening local and regional health product manufacturing capacities, supporting countries to plan and implement high quality digital health systems and development of an interim medical countermeasures coordination mechanism.

Addressing a press conference after the conclusion of the meeting, Union Health and Family Welfare Minister Dr Mansukh Mandaviya said member countries appreciated the fact that for India, health is a means of service and not commerce.

“During the pandemic, we supplied medicines at affordable rates to nearly 150 countries and also supplied vaccines against COVID-19 to many countries. We neither increased the prices of our medicines nor stockpiled it. Today, the entire world firmly believes if there is one country which will stand by it in difficult times, it is India,” said Mandaviya.

During the meeting, Mandaviya said he experienced how other countries are keen to not only procure medicines from India but are also keen to invest in the health sector in our country.

“In the health sector, a country will not succeed if it works alone. Health sector is a global sector. We all have to work together to fight crises like the pandemic. Everyone will be safe only when everyone works together,” said the Union minister.

The ‘Outcome Document’ stressed on the need to have “continued and collaborative efforts between finance and health streams, striving to mitigate economic vulnerabilities and risks from pandemics and improving readiness for large-scale pandemic response interventions”.

Expressing concern over rising cases of zoonotic spill overs and consequently emerging and reemerging diseases, the document calls for “strengthening existing infectious disease surveillance systems, including at the community-level and close cooperation amongst centres for disease prevention and control”.

In view of the emergence and re-emergence of climate change related health complications, the G20 members “recognized the need to enhance the resilience of health systems against the impact of climate change and also called for prioritizing climate-resilient health systems development, building sustainable and low-carbon/low greenhouse gas (GHG) emission health systems and healthcare supply chains”.

Recognising the potential role of evidence-based Traditional and Complementary Medicine (T&CM) in health, the members “acknowledged the potential of evidence-based T&CM practices in public health delivery systems, provided they are rigorously and scientifically validated to be safe and effective as per WHO TM Strategy”, the document stated.

The G20 nations also agreed there is “need for adaptable, affordable, agile, sustainable, inclusive, effective, efficient, accountable and equitable access to medical countermeasures”.

Building on the lessons from COVID-19 pandemic, we realize the significance of digital health and health data modernisation in strengthening healthcare systems and making health services, said the document.

Through the ‘Outcome Document’, members extended their support to “WHO’s efforts to establish the Global Initiative on Digital Health, a WHO managed network, which can help reduce fragmentation, provide convergence of digital health initiatives and voluntary funds including through promotion of interoperable open source, open standard digital solutions”.

The paragraph which has been declared as “Chair’s Summary” was about the war in Ukraine.

“The war in Ukraine has further adversely impacted the global economy... Most members strongly condemned the war in Ukraine and stressed it is causing immense human suffering and exacerbating existing fragilities in the global economy – constraining growth, increasing inflation, disrupting supply chains, heightening energy and food insecurity, and elevating financial stability risks,” as per the document.

As per the document, “Russia rejected the inclusion of geopolitical paragraph 22 on the basis that it does not conform to the G20 mandate and recognizes the status of the paragraph as Chair’s Summary. Russia agrees with the rest of the text”.

“China stated that G20 is not the right platform to address security issues and opposed the inclusion of the geopolitical related content,” the document said.

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