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At workshop with 10 nations, PM Modi stresses on regional cooperation and integration
The Prime Minister ended his speech by urging nations to focus on what unites all the countries so that the South Asian region can come together to fight against other common ills like poverty, climate crisis, and illiteracy.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday called for greater integration among South Asian countries as well as creation of a regional air ambulance pact. He said this while addressing a workshop on coronavirus management titled ‘Covid-19 Management: Experience, Good Practices and Way Forward’.
Nine countries - Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Maldives, Mauritius and Seychelles - participated in the event.
PM Modi gave Hindi a miss and switched over to English while addressing the workshop. After starting off with a namaste, PM Modi praised India’s response in tackling the Covid-19 pandemic.
“We created the Covid-19 emergency fund to meet the immediate cost of fighting the pandemic. We shared our resources, medicines, PPE, testing equipment, and above all we shared the most important commodity-knowledge," the Prime Minister said.
Talking about the regional air ambulance system, PM Modi said, “Can our civil aviation ministries create a regional air ambulance agreement for medical contingencies? Can we create a regional platform for collating, compiling, data about the effectiveness of the Covid-19 vaccines among our population? Can we similarly create a regional network for promoting technology driven epidemiology for preventing future pandemics?”
PM Modi highlighted two of his government’s flagship health schemes - Ayushman Bharat and Jan Arogya - as useful case studies for other countries.
“Beyond Covid can we also save our successful public health policies and schemes. From India our Ayushman Bharat and Jan Arogya scheme may be useful case studies for our friends in the region. Such collaborations can become the pathway for greater regional collaboration amongst us in other areas too” he said at the online workshop
The Prime Minister ended his speech by urging nations to focus on what unites all the countries so that the South Asian region can come together to fight against other common ills like poverty, climate crisis, and illiteracy. He added that for 21st century to be the Asian century, greater integration is needed for the countries of South Asia and Indian Ocean Island.
“If we focus on all that unites us our region can overcome not only the present pandemic but our other challenges too,” PM Modi said.
