Here Are Three Health Agendas Driven By Indonesia At The G20 India

JAKARTA - In his opening remarks at the meeting of the Minister of Health of the G20 in India, the Indonesian Minister of Health (Menkes) Budi Gunadi Sadikin conveyed three agendas for the Indonesian-driven health sector.

"Indonesia will continue to contribute and its leadership at the global and regional levels. Borrowing Mahatma Gandhi's philosophy that we don't have to wait for what others will do if we want to make changes," said Health Minister Budi Gunadi Sadikin in a statement in Jakarta, Saturday.

In his remarks, Minister of Health Budi said the G20 Ministers of Health had a joint opportunity to make changes to build a global health system for a better and healthier world.

Three health agendas that are encouraged by Indonesia are advancing the Declaration of One Health and continuing to operationalize the One Health concept in real action.

Minister of Health Budi said the real action of One Health's approach in the form of Integrated One Health Surveillance through the identification of 10 animals with 10 pathogens that could potentially be transmitted to humans resulted in a health emergency.

Indonesia as a country rich in biodiversity, said Budi, has an important role to play in preventing the overflow of pathogens, so that the region and global community are safer from potential pandemics.

The next agenda, he said, was to follow up on the results of the G20 Health Ministers in Indonesia by advancing the Mechanism of Global Medical Countermeasures Platform as a substitute for the Access to COVID-19 Tools Accelerator (ACT-A).

Minister of Health Budi also encouraged developed countries in the G20 to continue to help developing G20 member countries for the research and development of vaccine manufacturing, drugs, and diagnostic tools.

The latest agenda, encouraging innovation and digital solutions in the health sector, including the application of new technologies and intelligence that will improve health services through expanding access, improving service quality, and integrating health information systems.

Minister of Health Budi emphasized that the digital initiative proposed by the G20 does not stand alone. "Unfortunately, the current conditions are that existing initiatives are very fragmented and no one is advancing data standardization," he said.

For this reason, he continued, Indonesia supports the Global Initiative on Digital Health to unite efforts and investments in digital health rooms globally.

While in Gujarat, quoted from ANTARA, Saturday afternoon, Minister of Health Budi is scheduled to hold bilateral meetings with a number of Health Ministers from the Netherlands, Australia, India, England, Brazil, and EU.

The Indonesian Minister of Health and delegates also held meetings with leaders of international organizations in the health sector such as WHO, FIND, Gavi, BMGF, CEPI to improve health cooperation for better health services for the community, including primary services.