New Delhi, Sep 7: India’s strong and decisive actions like surveillance at points of entry slowed down the spread of Covid-19 and gave enough time to the country to build public health capacities and infrastructure to effectively manage the pandemic, Union Minister BharatiPravinPawar said on Tuesday.
The minister of state for health and family welfare represented India at the World Health Organization-South East Asia Regional Office (WHO-SEARO) through video-conference.
She offered intervention on behalf of India at the ministerial roundtable for the seventy-fourth session of the WHO Regional Committee for South-East Asia.
Pawar also highlighted the key measures and strategies planned to “build back better’ to achieve Universal Health Care and health related Sustainable Development Goals and to strengthen health system resilience for the future.
Noting that Covid-19 has affected virtually every sphere of life and caused a huge number of deaths, she said the country adopted a proactive, pre-emptive, whole of government, whole of society and people-centric approach to manage the pandemic.
“Our preparedness and response strategies utilised our past experiences of managing public health emergencies and contemporary scientific knowledge about evolving nature of disease to decide requisite public health interventions,” the minister said.
“India’s strategy for fighting the pandemic is built on five pillars – Test, Track, Treat, Vaccinate and adherence to Covid appropriate behaviour. With a decentralised but unified, whole of government approach, we focused on rapidly creating Covid-dedicated infrastructure and upskilling our healthcare workforce,” she said.