Cooperation, innovation & collaboration necessary to fight COVID-19: Experts

Innovation is another area that is important in the upscaling of healthcare infrastructure, he added. "If we need to have a pandemic resistant world, we need to have a system which is sustainable and works even when the pandemic is over," Guleria said..

The impact of COVID-19 has been devastating for the world and fighting it requires cooperation, innovation and collaboration, experts said on Friday at a virtual event organised by the Public Affairs Forum of India (PAFI). The overall strengthening of the healthcare system is important. The government has embarked on a tremendous job on Ayushman Bharat, and its combination with insurance for all sections of people will be an important building block in the vision of accessible, affordable and high quality care, Ficci President and Apollo Hospitals MD Sangita Reddy said.

The next is primary healthcare where reimagining, rethinking of processes, policies are required, she added while addressing the session on 'Building a Pandemic Resistant World'. "We are fighting the war of our generation. Let's respond with innovation, with new thought processes, with cooperation and collaboration between all the elements...," Reddy said.

There is also the need for enhancing the focus on healthcare workforce, she added. Stating that today there is not a single country in the world which can afford to give universal healthcare of a proper standard to all their citizens, Medanta Chairman & MD Naresh Trehan said, "Everybody is struggling." Wealth lies in preventing disease and in health. "If we want our country to become a healthy nation..., we need to pay equal attention, equal amount of money, equal infrastructure to be built into building health so that we can decrease the disease burden," he added.

We also need early warning system to ensure that the next pandemic does not bring us down on our knees, he added. Collaborative efforts within the government and between the government and the private sector is the need of the hour, Trehan said.

"Surveillance, containment and collaboration are crucial to create a pandemic resistant world. All countries have to come together to create a robust surveillance system with proactive involvement and need to invest considerably to improve the global health infrastructure," AIIMS Director Randeep Guleria said. Innovation is another area that is important in the upscaling of healthcare infrastructure, he added.

"If we need to have a pandemic resistant world, we need to have a system which is sustainable and works even when the pandemic is over," Guleria said..

(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)