The Global Health Security Consortium (GHSC) is delighted to be participating in the Health Working Groups as part of India’s G20 presidency this year. We strongly support the three health priorities identified by the Indian government and we are committed to continuing to work with G20 members, the World Health Organisation (WHO) and international organisations to improve our ability to respond quickly and effectively to future pandemic threats.
To deliver on this ambition we need to create functioning global-health architecture that can deliver for routine health services and during outbreaks in a financially sustainable manner.
Read more in our interventions below.
Priority #1 – Health Emergencies Pandemic Prevention, Preparedness and Response
GHSC commends India’s focus on converging prevention, preparedness and response (PPR) frameworks and the work to date by WHO on thematic convergence. In particular, we support recommendations in the Issue Note provided by the Indian presidency and comments by the US delegation, OECD, UNICEF, FIND and Gavi to include universal health coverage and primary health care in PPR frameworks.
This means building health-systems infrastructure that can reach people for routine surveillance, life-course immunisations and health-care delivery, and which can quickly pivot to combat outbreaks. Using PPR systems for routine care delivery will keep them relevant for communities and political leaders.
The G20 can strengthen this agenda by recommending specific and measurable targets for converging PPR agendas and linking this framework to universal health coverage. Together we can create functioning global-health architecture that can deliver both in between outbreaks and in response to outbreaks, improving health care for people around the world and bolstering our future health security.
Priority #2 – Strengthening Cooperation in the Pharmaceutical Sector
GHSC strongly supports WHO's and India’s efforts to strengthen digital-health capabilities globally. To support WHO and India's efforts, we have published a report with inputs from Gavi, Wellcome and others on how digital tools for Covid vaccines and life-course vaccines can support broader digital-health-enterprise architecture.
We strongly agree that any G20 Global Initiative on Digital Health should support all countries to develop their sovereign, cloud-based digital-health architecture and to integrate fragmented digital-health programmes into such an architecture.