Minister Of Health: Need To Form A Global Platform For Sharing Genome Sequence Data

JAKARTA - Minister of Health (Menkes) Budi Gunadi Sadikin emphasized the need to formalize a global platform for sharing genome sequence data so that it can be accessed by all parties when speed is needed to deal with the pandemic.

"So as the main goal, we need to form a global platform for sharing genomic sequence data. Forget about geopolitics, but remember about humanity, forget about the economy, who gets the data but remember how many lives can be saved," said Health Minister Budi Gunadi Sadikin, quoted by Antara, Thursday, February 17th.

Gunadi on the G20 agenda "High Level International Seminar: Strengthening Global Health Architecture" stated that this is one of the components needed to achieve a strengthening of the global health architecture.

The importance of a platform that can share genomic sequence data is reflected in the experience when the COVID-19 pandemic began to spread in Wuhan, China. The genome sequence data that was uploaded earlier in a few weeks was then made accessible to the researchers.

The speed of accessing data like that, said Budi, is needed when facing a pandemic because the virus spreads very quickly.

The existence of a platform to share genomic sequence data is part of Indonesia's efforts to encourage building a better global health system.

To achieve this, the Minister of Health also said the importance of having a global health fund to deal with the potential for the next pandemic.

Reflecting on the experience of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which can help countries with financial difficulties within a few weeks, the global health fund can carry out this capacity when facing a health crisis.

A global health fund is then needed to be able to move quickly to help those in need in the event of another pandemic in the future.