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Context

• The Union Minister of Health and Family Welfare and Chemicals and Fertilizers, Dr Mansukh Mandaviya exhorted India's commitment to strengthening the Digital Health System and closing the vaccine gap at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos at Congress Centre.

Digital Health

• The Minister emphasized the need to strengthen the Equitable Vaccine Manufacturing Collaborative (EVMC), to support Universal Health Coverage and Sustainable Development Goals and can help ensure accessibility and affordability of health service delivery at the WEF Annual Meeting.
• In his address he highlighted the initiatives taken by India to Unlock the Power of Digital Health:
  • India’s Digital Mission under Ayushman Bharat for the creation of a longitudinal Electronic Health Record for more than 1.3 billion people in India.
  • Through Non-Communicable Disease (NCD) application, India has been able to screen more than 80 million citizens for diabetes, hypertension and cancers and can create a population profile of India.
  • Telemedicine platform e-Sanjeevani has benefited more than 390 million beneficiariesthrough video consultations during the COVID-19 pandemic, making it the biggest such platform in the world.
  • CoWIN platform monitors name-based vaccination and has monitored the administration of more than 1.92 billion vaccination doses, including beneficiary registration, AEFI monitoring and a QR code-based digital certificate.
    • India has also offered Co-WIN as a digital public good to other countries to aid their vaccination efforts, aligned with India’s commitment to the traditional philosophy of “Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam” i.e. The World Is One Family.
  • India has promoted the digital health agenda at the global level as Chair of the Global Digital Health Partnership. 
  • With technologies like Artificial Intelligence, Cloud computing, 5G, and nanotech, India emphasizes the need to create a tech-supported healthcare service delivery which is resilient, reliable, and accessible to the last mile.
• The union Health minister on Closing the Vaccines Gap:
  • India has shown its prowess in vaccine research and development, manufacturing, and implementation when it indigenously developed Covid-19 vaccines and achieved the monumental task of administering more than 1.92 billion vaccines.
  • India has been known as the Pharmacy of the World and under Vaccine Maitri it supplied vaccines to 100 countries and provided drugs to 150 countries during COVID.
  • India envisages the Equitable Vaccine Manufacturing Collaborative (EVMC) designed to strengthen private-public sector partnerships across the vaccine manufacturing value chain in low and middle-income countries it also looks forward to supporting closing the vaccine gap in Africa.

About Ayushman Bharat

• Ayushman Bharat is a flagship scheme of the Government of India, was launched as recommended by the National Health Policy 2017,to achieve the vision of Universal Health Coverage (UHC).
• It was launched in September 2018 by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare.
• It is a national public health insurance fund of the Government of India that aims to provide free access to health insurance coverage for low-income earners in the country.
• Roughly, the bottom 50% of the country qualifies for this scheme.
• It is a centrally sponsored scheme and is jointly funded by both the union government and the states.
• By offering services to 50 crores (500 million) people it is the world's largest government-sponsored healthcare program.
• This initiative has been designed to meet Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and its underlining commitment, which is to "leave no one behind."

https://www.pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=1828349

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