Sustainable Recovery From COVID-19 Pandemic Should Begin With Vaccines: India At UN

New Delhi: “If we need to have any sustainable recovery from the pandemic, it should start with vaccines”, said Ambassador T. S. Tirumurti, Permanent Representative of India to the United Nations. Mr Tirumurti was speaking at the Peacebuilding Commission-ECOSOC meeting on ‘promoting durable peace and sustainable development in the context of recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic’. At the meeting, he made four main points – focus on vaccine equity; strengthen conflict-ridden state’s capacity to fight terror; resume financing immediately to revive economies, especially of small states; adopt human-centric digital initiatives.

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Mr Tirumurti spoke at length about vaccine equity and India’s role in ensuring the supply of vaccines to various countries. Here are the key points he made with regard to vaccine equity and a sustainable recovery:

1. Much of the developing world is yet to be vaccinated. The first focus should therefore be on vaccine equity.

2. We need to scale up our efforts and make the COVID-19 vaccine available, accessible and affordable.

3. Following the emergence of the Omicron variant, India has immediately offered support to the affected countries in Africa, including by supplying made-in-India vaccines, essential life-saving drugs and medical equipment.

4. We have supplied critical and life-saving medicines including half a million COVID-19 vaccines COVAXIN to Afghanistan. Keeping in mind the UN Peacekeepers operating under difficult circumstances, we donated two lakh COVID-19 vaccine doses to cover all of them.

5. To ramp up the production capacity of vaccines, it is essential for the global supply chains of raw materials to be kept open.

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While talking about terrorism in Africa and how it affects recovery from the COVID-19, Mr Tirumurti said,

Unless we are able to strengthen the state’s capacity to fight terror, we cannot have durable and sustainable recovery from either conflict or COVID.

While signing off, Mr Tirumurti urged to prioritise instead of overloading the agenda of recovery and making recovery anaemic.

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NDTV – Dettol have been working towards a clean and healthy India since 2014 via Banega Swachh India initiative, which is helmed by Campaign Ambassador Amitabh Bachchan. The campaign aims to highlight the inter-dependency of humans and the environment, and of humans on one another with the focus on One Health, One Planet, One Future – Leaving No One Behind. It stresses on the need to take care of, and consider, everyone’s health in India – especially vulnerable communities – the LGBTQ population, indigenous people, India’s different tribes, ethnic and linguistic minorities, people with disabilities, migrants, geographically remote populations, gender and sexual minorities. In wake of the current COVID-19 pandemic, the need for WASH (Water, Sanitation and Hygiene) is reaffirmed as handwashing is one of the ways to prevent Coronavirus infection and other diseases. The campaign will continue to raise awareness on the same along with focussing on the importance of nutrition and healthcare for women and children, fight malnutrition, mental wellbeing, self care, science and health, adolescent health & gender awareness. Along with the health of people, the campaign has realised the need to also take care of the health of the eco-system. Our environment is fragile due to human activity,  that is not only over-exploiting available resources, but also generating immense pollution as a result of using and extracting those resources. The imbalance has also led to immense biodiversity loss that has caused one of the biggest threats to human survival – climate change. It has now been described as a “code red for humanity.” The campaign will continue to cover issues like air pollution, waste management, plastic ban, manual scavenging and sanitation workers and menstrual hygiene. Banega Swasth India will also be taking forward the dream of Swasth Bharat, the campaign feels that only a Swachh or clean India where toilets are used and open defecation free (ODF) status achieved as part of the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2014, can eradicate diseases like diahorrea and the country can become a Swasth or healthy India.