New Delhi: Union Minister of Health and Family Welfare, Dr Mansukh Mandaviya addressed the G7 Ministerial meeting on Health Innovation in Nagasaki, Japan on Sunday (May 14). The meeting was held to discuss the priorities, implementation and utilization of health innovations like digital health towards ensuring Universal Health Coverage. Health Ministers of the G7 countries and invited “Outreach 4” countries of India, Indonesia, Vietnam and Thailand participated in the meeting.
Speaking on the occasion, Dr Mandaviya said,
Use of technology and Digital Health Tools are an enabler and equalizer which can facilitate strengthened health service delivery and aid in the achievement of Universal Health Coverage. The COVID-19 pandemic has catalysed the use of technology in health service delivery and also highlighted the need to focus on an enabling framework to bridge the digital divide across the countries specifically amongst low-and-middle-income countries.
Highlighting India’s achievements in Digital Health, the Union Health Minister said,
India’s COVID-19 vaccine delivery platform, Co-WIN has monitored the administration of over 2.2 billion vaccine doses across the length and breadth of the country and monitored not only cold chain management but also facilitated citizens and vaccinators in administration of the vaccines besides providing a QR code based digital vaccine certificate. Similarly, eSanjeevani, a National telemedicine platform, launched during the pandemic has already coordinated more than 115 million, free of cost, consultations to the citizens, making it the world’s biggest telemedicine platform.
Emphasising the need to embrace the advantages offered by new and evolving tools, Dr Mandaviya highlighted that artificial intelligence, smart wearables and big data analytics can aid precision medicine, personalized healthcare, genomics, and Clinical Decision Support Systems, ensuring the right treatment to the right person at the right time.
He also underlined the importance of ensuring the availability of these technological tools and stated,
India has already taken a policy decision to provide all such digital tools free of cost to the world as Digital Public Goods.
Dr Mandaviya also stated that India’s G20 Presidency has brought digital health as a specific priority and has proposed the convergence mechanisms of all digital initiatives across the world through the formation of the Global Initiative on Digital Health housed at World Health Organization HQ.
He stated that this initiative with a network-of-network approach will be crucial in bridging the global digital divide and urged the support of G7 countries for the proposed initiative in this regard.
(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
NDTV – Dettol have been working towards a clean and healthy India since 2014 via the 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, which 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.
