India for holistic health approach at UN; asserts walking the talk in global Covid effort

India's Counsellor at United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) Pratik Mathur said that India has taken a holistic approach to health based on 4 main pillars of healthcare, including preventive healthcare, affordable healthcare, supply-side healthcare and mission mode intervention. Delivering India's statement on 'Global Health and Foreign Policy' at the UNGA, Pratik Mathur said, that healthy life is every person's bonus. Countries' respective governments should ensure protection and enjoyment of this right by everyone, he added. 

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Pratik Mathur delivers India's statement at UNGA

Highlighting the need for the countries to come up with long-term strategies and roadmaps to deal with future pandemics, Mathur said that equitable access to affordable medicines, diagnostic tools and technologies remain a concern. During the session, Counsellor at United Nations General Assembly also thanked Indonesia for putting forward the resolution for this year on behalf of the 7-member countries on strengthening health system resilience to affordable healthcare for all and welcomed the resolutions on the International Day of Epidemic Preparedness and UN Decade of Healthy Ageing from 2021-30 tabled under the global agenda. 

While speaking on preventive healthcare, Mathur said that India has put special emphasis on Yoga, Ayurveda and fitness aimed at controlling lifestyle diseases such as diabetes, blood pressure, hypertension and depression. Explaining the National Health Protection Scheme (NHPS) launched in September 2018, the counsellor said that it played an essential role in promulgating affordable healthcare in the country. 

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Mathur said, "The National Health Protection Scheme is based on a 12-pillar approach expanding access to primary healthcare services through health and wellness centres, and providing insurance coverage for secondary and tertiary hospitalisations to poor and vulnerable families."

During the Global Health and Foreign Policy session at the UNGA, Mathur informed that 24,608 hospitals have been included under the program, and 126 million health cards have been issued to people. He also mentioned that the scheme provides health insurance coverage of up to USD 7,000 per family per year for secondary and tertiary hospitalizations. Speaking on mission mode intervention, he said,  "we have started the National Nutrition Policy to improve the nutritional status of the people, especially disadvantaged groups, including mothers, adolescent girls, and children."

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"In Sustainable Development Goals, 2030 has been set as the target for ending tuberculosis (TB). We plan to achieve this target by 2025, five years ahead of the deadline. To reach its goal, India has started implementing the National Strategic Plan and has substantially increased fund allocation for TB control," he added.

Claiming that the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the systematic weaknesses in health systems and vulnerabilities in capacity to prevent and respond to threats, Mathur said that they need to address the major weaknesses and gaps to strengthen global coordination to ensure that the world is better prepared to curb impacts of the future health-related crisis. He also asserted the need to capitalise on existing programs such as Access to COVID-19 Tools Accelerator (ACTA) and COVAX facility to ensure affordable and equitable global access to diagnostics, therapeutics and vaccines, while strengthening health systems. 

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(With ANI inputs)