76th Session of the United Nations General Assembly

Agenda item 129: Global Health and Foreign Policy

(29 March 2022)

Statement by Mr. Ashish Sharma, Counsellor

Permanent Mission of India to the United Nations

Mr. President

A healthy life is every person’s basic right and the onus for this rests on our respective governments to make every possible effort to ensure full protection and enjoyment of this right by everyone.

We appreciate the contribution of the Global Health & Foreign Policy dialogue in mobilizing political support for major public health issues and thereby ensuring that they are placed high on the international agenda.

Since its outbreak, the COVID-19 pandemic has caused over 6 million deaths around the world. It continues to pose a grave threat to global health and economy.

The pandemic has also brought home to us, several lessons. It has made us realize the importance of strong primary health care systems, increasing investments for health, and effective public health systems.

Mr. President

India has taken a holistic approach towards this subject based on the four main pillars of healthcare.

The first pillar is Preventive Healthcare. We have laid special emphasis on Yoga, Ayurveda and Fitness aimed at controlling lifestyle diseases such as diabetes, blood pressure, hypertension and depression.

The second pillar is Affordable Healthcare. India has launched the National Health Protection Scheme (Ayushman Bharat scheme) in September 2018. The scheme is based on the twin pillars – expanding access to primary healthcare service through Health and Wellness Centers and providing insurance coverage for secondary and tertiary care hospitalization to poor and families in vulnerable situations.

As on date, over 210 million health cards have been issued and more than 30 million people have availed treatments under the scheme.

The Scheme also provides for health insurance cover up to US $7,000 per family every year for secondary and tertiary hospitalization. This insurance is provided to about 100 million households or about 500 million people.

The third pillar is improvements on the supply side. We have taken several major steps for quality medical education, and for medical infrastructure development including the plan to set up 157 new medical colleges.

And the fourth pillar is mission mode intervention. We have started National Nutrition Policy to improve the nutritional status of the people, especially disadvantaged groups, including mothers, adolescent girls and children.

Mr. President

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought the linkage between global health and foreign policy closer than ever before.

India believes that equity is of critical importance for global health. We should address the barriers to development and distribution of medical countermeasures, including aspects related to intellectual property, technology transfer and scaling up of local and regional manufacturing capacities during health emergencies.

Th public health infrastructure in developing countries is underdeveloped and requires international support. Our efforts should, therefore, focus on provision of technical and financial support for building capacities of the member States.

Keeping in line with our approach of ‘One earth, One health’, India has continued contribution to the global action against the COVID pandemic through supply of medical counter measures and vaccines to over 150 countries.

Since January 2021, we have supplied more than 170 million doses of COVID vaccines to 96 countries and 2 UN entities, including more than 14 million doses as grant to 47 countries and UN peacekeepers. We have already resumed external supply of vaccines to fulfill our commitment to the COVAX facility.

India has been strongly advocating for the principle of equity in the WHO and has also proposed, along with South Africa, a TRIPS waiver at the WTO for COVID vaccines, diagnostics and medicines. While we await the decision on our proposal of IPR wavier, India has offered transfer of technology for production of indigenously developed vaccine such as COVAXIN.

We have also offered indigenously developed COVID-19 mitigation technologies, solutions and products, which are affordable, effective and safe. At the global CoWIN conclave held in July last year, we offered our vaccine delivery CoWIN platform as open-source software to interested countries.

The moto of the Government of India, ‘Together, for everyone’s growth, with everyone’s trust and effort’ resonates with the core SDG principle of leaving no one behind.

We are committed to partner with Member States and other stakeholders to synergize our efforts to accelerate progress towards achieving sustainable development goals and universal health coverage with the most productive, efficient and effective utilization of resources.

I thank you