In a historic address at the 75th session of the World Health Assembly in Geneva at WHO HQ, the Union Minister of Health and Family Welfare and Chemicals and Fertilizers, Dr. Mansukh Mandaviya exhorted India's commitment to build a more resilient global health security architecture. Underscoring the need to strengthen WHO, the Union Minister noted, "As highlighted by India’s Prime Minister, there is a need to build a resilient global supply chain to enable equitable access to vaccines and medicines, streamlining WHO's approval process for vaccines and therapeutics and strengthen WHO to build a more resilient global health security architecture". As a responsible member of the global community, India is ready to play a key role in these efforts, he added.
The Union Minister noted, "India believes that this year’s theme linking peace and health, is timely & pertinent because there can be no sustainable development & universal health & wellbeing without peace".However at the session, India also raised dismay and concern over WHO’s recent exercise on all cause excess mortality, where country specific authentic data published by the statutory authority has not been taken into account. In this regard, the Union Health Minister conveyed the collective disappointment of the Central Council of Health and Family Welfare, a representative body of Health Ministers from all States of India, as they passed a unanimous resolution regarding the approach and methodology of WHO on excess mortality reports.