Minister Of Health And Minister Of Finance Throughout ASEAN Agree To Strengthen Cooperation In Handling The Pandemic

Illustration of ASEAN (Photo: Doc. Antara)

JAKARTA The meeting of the Ministers of Health and the Minister of Finance of ASEAN agreed on efforts to strengthen cooperation in handling the current and future pandemics.

Minister of Finance (Menkeu) Sri Mulyani said the meeting in Jakarta today was very productive in building the same direction of development.

"This discussion facilitates and improves coordination of the financial sector which can ultimately increase effectiveness for health and economic challenges that can be caused by other pandemics in the future," he said at a press conference in Jakarta, Thursday, August 24.

According to the Minister of Finance, Southeast Asian countries have agreed to make a centralized study that focuses on pandemic research. In addition, ASEAN also agreed that intense collaboration was needed to prevent the impact of the impact on the economic sector.

"We are building momentum to increase strong recovery by implementing existing mechanisms and strategies and optimizing regional resources," he said.

The Minister of Finance explained that efforts to increase intervention need to be accompanied by multilateral financing initiatives by cooperating with international partners.

"We also want to affirm our commitment to strengthen regional health architecture in ASEAN," he stressed.

On the same occasion, Minister of Health (Menkes) Budi Gunadi Sadikin revealed that the lessons learned from COVID-19 were very large. It was stated that in one time the pandemic could last up to 50 years or even 100 years.

"We see that the funds in ASEAN should be one health fund that can combine, integrate, and synchronize every modality and funding of the public sector as well as the private sector as well as philanthropy," he explained.

The Minister of Health said funding mobilization is very important to support real action in the health sector

"So that we can form a national regional and global scheme in order to be able to channel these funds effectively and efficiently to deal with emerging circumstances," said the Minister of Health.