Ministry Of Health Plans To Formalize The Establishment Of A Pandemic Preparation Fund

JAKARTA - The Ministry of Health plans to formalize the establishment of a pandemic preparation fund in order to build the resilience of the global health system.

"So if there is another pandemic in the future, there must be a reserve of funds," said Health Minister Budi Gunadi Sadikin at a press conference on the sidelines of the Health Working Group's agenda in Lombok, NTB, as reported by Antara, Monday, June 6.

As a leader in the Health Working Group meeting, he said, he would focus on three main things in building the resilience of the global health system, namely mobilizing financial resources for pandemic prevention, preparedness and response.

Once the funds have been established, he said, they must find ways how the funds can be used to access medicines, vaccines, and pandemic test kits.

The second focus is the mobilization of essential health resources for pandemic prevention, preparedness and response.

"Structures and mechanisms must be built to mobilize resources quickly and fairly so that emergency medical measures can be accessed by all countries when a health crisis occurs, both now and in the event of another health threat in the future," he said.

The proposal, continued the Minister of Health, has been fully supported by countries such as Italy, China, Argentina, Korea, and the European Union.

Countries such as the United States, India, France, and South Africa also support with a number of recommendations such as more detailed financing mechanisms and an emphasis on the importance of equitable access to essential medical care.

Budi Gunadi also conveyed that the Access to COVID-19 Tools (ACT) Accelerator, which was launched in April 2020 by the World Health Organization (WHO) and partners, has become an innovative global collaboration platform.

"It is necessary to consolidate and ensure the current model can be changed to a more permanent, global and inclusive approach," he said.

The third focus is on optimizing genomic surveillance and strengthening reliable data-sharing mechanisms to provide strong global public health incentives.

He said using a universal data-sharing platform (GISAID+ model) allows all G20 countries to communicate and share information and data, not only for the current pandemic, but also on other global pathogens that have pandemic potential in the future.

He said all member countries also supported this proposal with several recommendations and clarifications so that there would be no duplication of global efforts.

In addition, more detail is needed in terms of accessibility, benefits, and impacts for countries.

The Minister of Health hopes to obtain approval by all G20 member countries to recognize the use of GISAID as a universal platform.

"We want to make sure there is agreement so that all laboratories in the world can share pathogen data if there is another pandemic," he said.

Thus, continued the Minister of Health, if there is another pandemic in another country, there is already a mechanism to report genomic sequence data from pathogens given from that country. The genome can be a virus, bacteria, parasite.