homeeconomy NewsDavos 2023 | India's CoWIN, UPI model for other countries' development, says Gates Foundation CEO
Davos 2023 | India's CoWIN, UPI model for other countries' development, says Gates Foundation CEO
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s CEO Mark Suzman also stated that it's a very big disappointment how the world needs to be better prepared for the pandemic has changed and no one seems to be talking about that anymore in the WEF 2023.
India’s citizen models like Aadhar, CoWIN and UPI system can be expanded as fundamental building blocks for development in other countries, said Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s chief executive officer (CEO) Mark Suzman in an interview with CNBC-TV18's Shereen Bhan at the World Economic Forum (WEF) meet at Davos.
“Digital financial inclusion and digital identity are fundamental building blocks for development where India between the AADHAR and the UPI system, and also innovations such as the CoWIN vaccine system, are models that we think can be expanded and built out in many other countries to benefit,” said Suzman while explaining about the ways that Gates Foundation is looking to both help and support governments.
Suzman also added that there are exciting innovations that we have been learning from India that we can help bring to other countries as well. The Gates Foundation CEO also stated that it's a very big disappointment how the world needs to be better prepared for the pandemic has changed and no one seems to be talking about that anymore in the WEF 2023.
He said, “It’s both a surprise and a potential tragedy because the one thing we know having come through the worst pandemic of the past century, which killed millions of people and caused trillions of dollars of economic damage, is we will have another one.”
“There have been very concrete proposals made through the G20 and other mechanisms that say, for $10 billion a year, the world could put in place through the World Health Organisation, through supportive regional organisations, through research and development, a system that would leave us well prepared to do that. Currently, we are falling far short, short of $10 billion, and the total money raised to date is $1.6 billion, which was announced at the last G20 and we need $10 billion a year, which is a fraction of the amount of money that was spent during the pandemic. So it feels to us very short-sighted.”
Setbacks in global health
Suzman, while revealing his concerns about setbacks in global health, said, “COVID has been about much more than COVID. If you look at the impact across much of the Global South, we have seen setbacks in areas like HIV prevention, tuberculosis, malaria diseases that disproportionately affect those across Asia and Africa and Latin America, where for 20 years, we have seen steady progress, we had seen a halving of mortality from HIV, a halving of mortality from malaria and the last two years, those trends have begun to reverse they stagnated and reversed. And that is because we are not getting the resources, we're not getting the energy and attention we need. We think that's a serious problem that we are trying to do.”
Suzman added that we can either focus on wars and inflation and other issues or we can look at core human issues of health and poverty reduction. “We are seeing a lot more rhetorical progress on battling food crisis, people are saying the right things, we are not seeing the investment at the level and scale that's needed,” he added.
“If you look at the Horn of Africa, where they are an area that has been prone to droughts historically, but they have never had five consecutive years missing a rainy season. As a result, there are tens of millions of people in acute hunger at the moment, hundreds of millions of people not getting enough to eat across the continent and other parts of the world. And that is a direct result of climate change. These are the people who contributed by far the least to global emissions, almost nothing and yet they are being affected right now in real-time,” he further added.
“We say it makes sense to put in place investments that do drought and flood-resilient crops and livestock because these are people who depend on crops and food for their lives and their livelihoods and it's a very proven path to development. We at the Gates Foundation, made a commitment of $1.4 billion into climate adaptation at the recent COP conference, this is going to be a top priority for us.”
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s India goals
Suzman, while talking about the goals that the Gates foundation has set for India, said, “We have been in India for close to two decades now, and have a set of very close partnerships both at state and national level and with a range of private and civil society partners.”
“Some of our most exciting work has been working in the states of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh supporting the governments and the Chief Ministers there around array of particularly health and agriculture interventions. We've also been working with groups like the Department of Biotechnology around helping support where India has a lot of research and development innovation going on in areas like crops and livestock and some of the medical areas.”
He also stated that the foundation has also worked with partners like the Serum Institute of India and other companies who have developed lifesaving vaccines. Suzman said that they are the largest suppliers to the GAVI vaccine Alliance.
GAVI most successful alliance globally
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation CEO, while talking about the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation (GAVI) said, they've saved millions of lives, children from preventable deaths from vaccines, adults from preventable deaths from you know, HIV and also malaria.
He said, “20 years ago, two great organisations were born and The Gates Foundation was proud to have a part in creating both of them. The Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization: GAVI, the vaccine Alliance, and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria and between them, those have been arguably the most successful global health interventions in human history. They have saved literally millions of lives, children from preventable deaths from vaccines, adults from preventable deaths from HIV, and also malaria.”
(Edited by : Vivek Dubey)
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