Your Excellency, Ministry and NPSP officials, WHO colleagues,
A very good afternoon to you all.
At the outset, I would like to thank His Excellency, the Hon’ble Minister of Health, Dr Harsh Vardhan, for convening this meeting. The entire world continues to grapple with the immense challenge that COVID-19 provides.
As of this morning, the South-East Asia Region has confirmed more than 20 000 cases and about 900 deaths. The spread of COVID-19 in our Region has been comparatively slow, with almost all countries adopting early and aggressive physical distancing measures. We are relatively well positioned.
In the ten countries most affected by COVID-19 worldwide, the crude mortality ratio ranges from 12.8% in Italy to 2.5% in Germany. In the South-East Asia Region, the ratio ranges from 9% in Indonesia to 1.6% in Thailand. At this stage, the variance is primarily due to insufficient testing rather than a lack of treatment.
Countries in the Region are fully mindful that physical distancing alone is unsustainable and will not achieve the goals laid out in national action plans. They are now planning the next phase of the response.
To help them do that, earlier this week WHO published a COVID-19 Strategy Update that outlines key interventions that countries must implement to suppress and control transmission, with the aim of reaching and/or maintaining a steady state of low-level or no transmission.
Core to the strategy are the public health measures that WHO has emphasized from day one: finding, testing and isolating cases, and quarantining contacts. But the document is not prescriptive in how countries should implement these measures, nor should it be: Each country has distinct resources it can draw on, and with which it can innovate.
India is of course a large and diverse country that faces unique challenges. But as history demonstrates, when India sets itself a goal, it can overcome all obstacles. There can be no better example than when in 2014 India achieved polio elimination.
Many of you may be unaware that it was the Hon’ble Minister of Health, Dr Harsh Vardhan, who masterminded the first ever polio vaccination campaign conducted in India, which began in Delhi on 2 October 1994, when His Excellency was the Health Minister of Delhi. The movement that His Excellency started soon spread to the entire country, and the results are there for all to see.
It is worth pointing out that very few people believed that a disease like polio could be eliminated from a country like India. And yet, with a systematic and scientific approach, India did it.
National and state governments played a major role in India’s achievement. But we cannot forget the remarkable contributions of the NPSP. Established by WHO in 1997, the NPSP was crucial to strengthening polio surveillance to generate useful, timely and accurate data to guide policies, strategies and interventions to interrupt poliovirus transmission.
We, and the entire world, are indeed very proud of the NPSP’s contributions.
We are also proud of how versatile NPSP staff are. In 2014, 50 NPSP staff provided surge support to the Ebola response, helping to bring the outbreak to an end. Across India, NPSP and WHO field staff continue to support efforts to tackle TB and neglected tropical diseases, in addition to hypertension control initiatives.
Dear staff in the field: This is the time to gear up once more and take on this new challenge.
In the fight against COVID-19, surveillance will play an increasingly vital role in helping health leaders devise containment strategies. Moving forward, all countries must strengthen surveillance for COVID-19. You have the knowledge, you have the experience and you have the skills. It is time to put all of these together for the cause of humanity.
There are many ways in which you can contribute. Your core strengths are surveillance and data. Put them to work now for the cause. The kind of rigour and discipline that you showed while monitoring polio activities – use it to support districts with contact tracing and other containment activities. In the battle against polio, you played a major role in supporting district administrations to negotiate local challenges. Apply those same skills in the battle against COVID-19.
My WHO India team will assist the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare to finalize the key areas in which you can contribute, based on your strengths and capacities. I urge you to work closely with, and under the overall guidance of, the state and district governments, and within the defined framework.
We must ensure that collaboration and coordination with the NCDC, IDSP and ICMR is tight, and that you supplement each other’s efforts. We must also make agility a hallmark of the response, with states continuing to share information so that they can learn from one another.
In the coming weeks and months, each state will experience varying levels of transmission, and will need to calibrate its response accordingly. The rapid sharing of information between states will help them adopt the best response based on the resources they can access.
The WHO Country Office will continue to facilitate the sharing of best practices based on transmission scenarios and local capacities. The Regional Office will continue to provide the broader framework in which those practices should be applied based on regional and global experience and knowledge.
I am certain that state and district officials will welcome your support. The perseverance and dedication that you showed for polio elimination is required again, and I have no doubt that you will live up to and surpass expectations.
Before I conclude, I want to remind you that disease outbreaks can negatively impact progress in a range of areas, from maternal and child mortality to vaccine-preventable diseases and other treatable conditions.
India has in recent years made remarkable progress in these and other areas, and we cannot afford for it to be set back or reversed. We must do all we can to maintain essential services, for which you can count on WHO’s support.
With that, I thank Your Excellency once again and look very much forward to India’s continued progress.
Thank you.