New Delhi (TIP): Applauding the “spirit of collaboration” among South Asian and Indian Ocean island countries as “a valuable takeaway from this pandemic”, Prime Minister Narendra Modi suggested Thursday the creation of a regional platform for collating and studying data on the effectiveness of the Covid-19 vaccines, a special visa scheme for doctors and nurses to travel within the region during health emergencies, and a regional air ambulance agreement for medical contingencies.

Official sources later said “all countries, including Pakistan, supported the PM’s proposals”. They sought a structured discussion for regional cooperation on these proposals to take them forward, sources said.

Addressing a workshop on ‘Covid-19 Management: Experience, Good Practices and Way Forward’ — it is being attended by health leaders, experts and officials of Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Maldives, Mauritius, Nepal, Pakistan, Seychelles, Sri Lanka and India — the Prime Minister said: “Today, the hopes of our region and the world are focused on rapid deployment of vaccines. In this too, we must maintain the same cooperative and collaborative spirit.” “When Covid-19 hit the world last year, many experts voiced special concern about our densely populated region. But, from the very beginning, we all met this challenge with a coordinated response. In March last year, we were the first to come together for recognising the threat and committing to fight it together. Many other regions and groups followed our early example,” he said.

“We created the Covid-19 Emergency Response Fund to meet the immediate costs of fighting the pandemic. We shared our resources — medicines, PPEs, and testing equipment. And, above all, we shared the most valuable commodity, knowledge, through collaborative training of our health workers. Through webinars, online courses and IT portals, we shared experiences and learned from each other’s best practices in testing, infection control and medical waste management. We developed our own best practices based on what worked best for us. Each one of us contributed immensely to this pooling of knowledge and experience,” he said.

“This spirit of collaboration is a valuable takeaway from this pandemic. Through our openness and determination, we have managed to achieve one of the lowest fatality rates in the world. This deserves to be applauded,” he said.

“Over the past year, our health cooperation has already achieved so much. Can we now think of raising our ambition further? Allow me to make some suggestions for your discussions today: Can we consider creating a special visa scheme for our doctors and nurses, so that they can travel quickly within our region during health emergencies, on the request of the receiving country?”.

“Can our Civil Aviation ministries coordinate a regional air ambulance agreement for medical contingencies? Can we create a regional platform for collating, compiling and studying data about the effectiveness of Covid-19 vaccines among our populations? Can we similarly create a regional network for promoting technology-assisted epidemiology, for preventing future pandemics?” he said.

                Source: The Indian Express