G20 HWG meet in Hyderabad from Jun 4-6 to focus on medical counter measures

: The third meeting of the G20 Health Working Group (HWG) will be held in Hyderabad from June 4-6, an official said on Saturday.

The third HWG meeting will have a main event and also a side event, with a focus on collaboration on R&D in Medical Counter Measures (MCMs). Co-branded events with the Global Vaccine Research Collaborative and a Joint Finance Health Task Force meeting are also on the cards, Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare's Additional Secretary Lav Agarwal said at a press conference here. Apart from India, delegates from 19 G20 member states, 10 invited countries, and 22 international organisations will be participating in the third HWG meeting, he said.

The HWG has proposed deliverables, including mapping of ongoing initiatives in health emergencies, prevention, preparedness and response, and the launch of a climate change and health hub to work on the interface of climate change and its impact on health, he said.

The creation of regional vaccines, therapeutics and diagnostics (VTD), research and development manufacturing networks and creation of a Global Medical Countermeasures Coordination platform will also be discussed, Agarwal said.

Launch of a Global Initiative on Digital Health'- an institutional framework to converge existing digital health initiatives is also among the proposed deliverables.

During the HWG meetings held in Thiruvananthapuram and Goa in January and April this year respectively, the health priorities were introduced and discussed in detail.

"Due to the advocacy created by India's G20 Presidency in the Health Working Group, we have so far been able to garner in-principle agreement to the three proposed priorities", he said.

Based on the previous meetings, non-papers and issue notes were drafted and circulated to countries to advance discussions on priorities and deliverables, he said.

"We would like to use G20 as a forum to ensure that we are able to build consensus on these deliverables and we converge in terms of ensuring that the world is better prepared to manage any future health emergency, not only in terms of decision-making through an agile global health architecture, but also to ensure that medicines, diagnostics and vaccines are available not only to a few countries in the world but globally.

"We would like to ensure that through use of technology, all these initiatives can be integrated and technology tools are made available globally across the world," he added.

The delegates will be taken to 'Genome Valley' (in Hyderabad) -- home to the who is who' of global life sciences companies -- to showcase India's prowess in life sciences R&D and pharmaceutical manufacturing.

Genome Valley alone accounts for 33 per cent of the global vaccine production, including vaccines for diseases such as covid-19, polio and rotavirus, he said adding that the delegates will get an opportunity to visit and interact with top companies, research organisations, and academic institutions of the world.