Iran ambassador lauds India for 'Vaccine Maitri' says country 'famous for helping world'

Appreciating India for helping various countries by providing them vaccines to fight the deadly coronavirus, Iran's ambassador to India Dr Ali Chegeni on Monday, March 22 said that India is 'now famous for helping all the countries across the globe.' Speaking to ANI, he said that Iran has also developed the vaccine to battle coronavirus and is sharing knowledge with India. Further, he emphasized the close connection between the two countries and said that the event is a message of friendship and coexistence, referring to the occasion of Navroz. 

Chegani said, “This initiative by India is appreciated by (countries) all over the world especially in my country as we received some doses of the India-made vaccine. We also developed our own vaccine and we are sharing knowledge between Iran and India. We have very good cooperation in this field. India is now famous in helping all the countries in the world. We also appreciate them from our side too”. He added, “India and Iran are very close in nature, in geography and culture. This is a message of friendship, coexisting and leaving the enmity and going towards friendship”. 

Appreciating India 

Recently, Barbados Prime Minister Mia Amor Mottley also praised India for its efforts in the distribution of the COVID-19 vaccines across the world. She said that the nation understands that merely administering vaccinations to its own citizens would not be sufficient to solve the world's problems. Lauding India for its 'Vaccine Maitri' initiative, Barbados Prime Minister said that the Indian government's gift (COVID-19 vaccines) is so "significant today". She affirmed, "The one thing that was missing is global coordination in the things that we do to shut down or to coordinate on how we treat the virus and how we distribute vaccines."

Earlier this month, India sent stocks of Covishield and Covaxin vaccines to Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Ghana, Nigeria, Guyana, Guatemala and other countries. India's Vaccine Maitri programme that was started around one-and-a-half-month ago aims to help poor countries amid pandemic has won global praise. In this brief period, the country has delivered around 56 million doses of Oxford-AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine manufactured by the Serum Institute of India (SII) and Bharat Biotech's indigenous vaccine. So far, India has exported the Oxford-AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine manufactured by the Serum Institute of India (SII) and Bharat Biotech's indigenous vaccine to more than 31 countries and will be providing vaccine doses to 46 more countries in the coming days.

(Image Credits: PTI/RepresentativeImage)