Health Minister Dr. Harsh Vardhan attended the 73rd session of WHO South East Asia Region (SEARO) through video conference today. Representing India, Dr. Harsh Vardhan offered two interventions in the ministerial round table session on COVID-19 Emergency Preparedness. He first spoke on the important interventions that were applied to manage COVID – 19 and maintain essential non – COVID health services in India.
He later expounded on the strategies that are being applied to ensure that there are increased investments in health and health emergency preparedness and response as well as in International Health Regulation (IHR) core capacities to prevent future pandemics.
The Minister outlined the measures being undertaken by the Government such as issuing of travel advisories, creation of facilities for quarantine of persons returning from countries which reported cases of COVID – 19, issuing of guidelines for community level surveillance and also scaling up of testing facilities, tracking and testing of all suspect cases. He also highlighted the increasing domestic production capacity of PPE, ventilators and other medical items required for treatment of COVID patients which has resulted in India’s resilience in the health sector.
He spoke about India’s flagship ‘Pradhan Mantri – Atmanirbhar Swasth Bharat Yojana’. He added that this will expand public health infrastructure, improve healthcare service delivery and quality, strengthen disease surveillance systems and outbreak response.
Source: All India Radio
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