India's union minister for health and family welfare Mansukh Mandaviya addressed the closing session of the 4th Indo-US Health Dialogue being hosted by India.
The two-day dialogue was leveraged as a platform to deliberate upon multiple ongoing collaborations in the health sector between the two countries.
The issues related to areas of concern pertaining to strengthening of epidemiological research and surveillance, vaccine development, One Health, zoonotic and vector-borne diseases, health systems and health policies etc. were discussed during the two day dialogue.
Two MoUs were also signed at the concluding session. One MoU was signed between the health ministry and the Department of Health and Human Services of the USA concerning cooperation in the field of health and biomedical sciences. Another MoU was signed between Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) & National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases for cooperation on International Centre for Excellence in Research (ICER).
“We all know that both India and US are global partners, and we also need to work collaboratively in reforming the global health architecture, whose fault lines have become amply visible during the current pandemic,” the health minister said.
Equally important areas where in both India and US can work, relates to managing health emergencies, supporting digital health and innovation, mental health interventions, research coupled with production related to diagnostics, therapeutics and, vaccines considering India offering its low-cost research network and huge production capacities, he said.