Under its G20 Presidency, India plans to strive for equitable access to health care for all and to help create a framework which can reduce disparities in health care availability across the world, Union Minister Bharati Pawar said on Thursday.
She also said traditional medicine had played a vital role in promoting health and wellness in communities worldwide.
“India envisions to accelerate efforts towards increasing the pace of implementation of value-based health care and achieving the goal of universal health coverage across the world,” Ms. Pawar said.
She was speaking after inaugurating a session on Medical Value Travel on the sidelines of the first Health Working Group meeting under G20 India presidency in Thiruvananthapuram.
Underscoring the significance of medical value travel, the Minister said for centuries, traditional medicine had played a vital role in promoting health in communities worldwide, and it continued to be a first port of call and crucial resource for individuals.
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“Traditional medicine is gaining worldwide recognition as effective tools for pain management and hold a lot of promise against antibiotic resistance too. Over 170 of 194 WHO member States have also reported the use of traditional medicine,” she said.
Ms. Pawar lauded India’s efforts toward creating a unique ecosystem for holistic wellness and health care.
“India has been able to combine the best of modern and traditional medicine coupled with wellness treatments. Also, our health system offers quality treatment, having widespread availability and is one of the most affordable in the world,” she said.
Encouraging the participants to promote value-based healthcare, Ms. Pawar urged the stakeholders to discuss and enable equitable access to value-based health care services across the globe.
Reiterating the need for a holistic policy framework to promote medical value travel, she said, “medical value travel across most of the countries is driven by private sector and while it facilitates provisioning of health services to needy patients cutting across geographical boundaries, the policy imperative to promote medical value travel needs to gain momentum”.
“With G20 India presidency, we have the opportunity to create multilateral collaborations between countries, facilitated by knowledge sharing, leading to the formulation of effective policies aiding accessible, affordable, and quality health care to citizens across the world,” she said.
The Minister said she was hopeful that G20 nations would forge a unique blueprint for the future of medical value travel through effective collaborations.
