The Union Minister for Health & Family Welfare recently introduced ‘the World Health Organisation (WHO) India Country Cooperation Strategy 2019–2023: A Time of Transition’. This strategy, known as the Country Cooperation Strategy (CCS), represents a mid-term vision for cooperation between the WHO and its member countries.
This strategy is intended to guide the WHO in partnering with India to achieve its health sector goals, providing a strategic roadmap that outlines key focus areas and initiatives.
Four Areas of Strategic Cooperation
According to the CCS, the WHO’s collaboration with India will center around four strategic areas. They are Universal Health Coverage (UHC), addressing the determinants of health to improve health and wellness, protecting against health emergencies, and fostering India’s global leadership in health.
Alignment with WHO ‘Triple Billion’ Targets and SDGs
The India CCS aligns fully with the WHO ‘triple billion’ targets, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and WHO South-East Asia Region’s eight Flagship Priorities. It calls for addressing the emerging health scenario in the country, which includes challenges such as non-communicable diseases, antimicrobial resistance, and air pollution.
National Initiatives and Policies
The strategy also ties in with India’s National Health Policy 2017 and other national initiatives such as Ayushman Bharat, National Viral Hepatitis programme, Eat Right India movement, the Fit India movement, and Poshan Abhiyaan. These initiatives have played a significant role in engaging the public and raising awareness about critical health areas.
| WHO ‘Triple Billion’ targets | A five-year plan targeting three main goals: benefiting one billion more people through Universal Health Coverage (UHC), protecting one billion more people from health emergencies, and enabling one billion more people to have better health and well-being. |
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| National Health Policy, 2017 | This policy aims to provide universal access to high-quality health care services without causing financial hardship. It plans to gradually increase public health expenditure to 2.5% of the GDP, propose free drugs, diagnostics, and emergency and essential healthcare services in public hospitals, and advocates allocating two-thirds of resources to primary care. |
Source
This information has been sourced from the Press Information Bureau.