G20 Agrees To Form A Health Funding Task Force To Prevent Pandemics In The Future

Illustration (Photo: Doc. Antara)

JAKARTA - Minister of Finance (Menkeu) Sri Mulyani together with G20 finance ministers agreed to form a Health Funding Task Force or Finance Health Task Force as a mechanism for handling current and future pandemics.

“Preparation for a pandemic or so-called pandemic preparedness really depends on first whether there will be an agreement on health protocols between countries. The second is what kind of governance will be regulated, because we have WHO. And the third most important is funding," said Minister of Finance Sri Mulyani in a press statement in Italy, Sunday, October 31.

According to the state treasurer, this initiative was driven by President Joko Widodo who wants to strengthen the global health architecture. The Minister of Finance said that collaboration between countries in access to vaccines, health protocols, and also funding is very crucial.

"It was agreed that there would be a joint finance health task force or in this case a work unit between the ministers of finance and the ministers of health under the G20 whose purpose is to prepare the prevention, preparedness, and response of the pandemic whose task force is led by the Ministers of Finance of Indonesia and Italy," she said.

The task force, according to the Minister of Finance, received a lot of support in discussions between heads of state. Indonesia's role is important because Indonesia is a large country and has a commitment to vaccination that reaches 70 percent.

"In this summit meeting is a declaration that at least 70 percent of the world's population must have been vaccinated by mid-2022 or 40 percent by the end of this year. This requires support, especially for poor countries, where the number of vaccinations is still very low," said the Minister of Finance.

For information, the world's unpreparedness for the COVID-19 pandemic has cost up to 12 trillion US dollars and 5 million people died.