India is planning to strengthen its health cooperation with South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) partners. As part of this, the union health ministry along with its counterparts from SAARC countries met in New Delhi last week and had come out with a resolution called Delhi Declaration. The aim of this resolution is to strengthen health cooperation among SAARC partners and combat diseases collectively.
SAARC comprises of 8 countries in South Asia which India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Maldives, Nepal, Bhutan, and Afghanistan. All these countries have formed a group and have agreed to cooperation in five important areas of agriculture and rural development, telecommunications, science, technology and meteorology, health and population activities, transport and human resource development.
As health is given highest priority for cooperation among the 5 major areas, all the countries have held a meeting in New Delhi and have agreed to strengthen their cooperation further in combating the common disease such as AIDS, Polio, TB and promote access to medicines.
The SAARC technical committee meeting on health and population activities also stressed on setting up of SAARC Supra National Reference Laboratory for TB and HIV/AIDS. “Union ministry of health government of India and other SAARC partners have decided to strengthen health cooperation among the partners. As part of this a Delhi declaration is also adopted by the member states to meet the commitments made during various SAARC meetings in the area of healthcare,” said a source in the health department.
The Delhi declaration on public health challenges mainly focuses on increased cooperation among member states and stresses on the need for high quality and high coverage immunization for vaccine preventable diseases along with modern monitoring systems; action for prevention and control of tuberculosis, vector borne diseases, hepatitis B & C; non-communicable diseases and mental health disorders; international health regulations and prevention of infectious diseases; preventing and containing the threat of antimicrobial resistance; providing access to medicines and enhancing the quality and availability of human resources for health.
The declaration also stresses on issues like promoting access to medicines including through the use of flexibilities under TRIPS agreement (World Trade Organization Agreement on Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights) and to promote these in the bilateral and regional trade agreements in order to protect public health interest.
SAARC partners have also agreed to pursue mutual cooperation among the professional bodies regulating medicine/ nursing/allied health, on training needs of human resources and have also highlighted the importance of promotion of traditional systems of medicine for combating common disease from all aspects.