VOI - Voice of Indonesia | RRI - Radio Republik Indonesia

G20 member countries support and encourage a network of harmonization of connected health protocols between countries. This inter-state network connection is encouraged to become one of the important points in the summit talks of the G20 Summit, in Bali, on 15-16 November 2022, in addition to agreeing to launch a "pandemic fund".

This harmonization of health protocols is a bridge for countries, especially those who are members of the G20, to connect with each other regarding human mobilization during a pandemic more safely in order to accelerate economic recovery. This harmonization agreement is the result of the second G20 ministerial meeting or Health Ministerial Meeting, held in October 2022.

“This harmonization is in the form of collaboration in certification of people's travel between countries. If there is another pandemic (similar to Covid-19), the country will no longer need to impose a regional quarantine or lock down. Healthy people can still move or travel, while those who are sick cannot," said Secretary General of the Ministry of Health Kunta Wibawa Dasa Nugraha, at a press conference #G20updates, according to a release received by Voice of Indonesia on Friday (11/11/2022).

Kunta explained that the collaboration of health protocols that are interconnected with each country's application is useful for controlling each other's mobilization of healthy people on the way. The hope is that when facing a pandemic in the future, people can travel so that the economy continues to spin.

The experience of the last pandemic, he continued, a number of countries issued lock down policies. Many healthy people are unable to carry out their activities, including traveling abroad, resulting in the collapse of the economy.

According to Kunta, harmonization of global health standards is very useful in helping the world control the negative impact of future health emergencies. The way is, countries that agree to integrate to be connected exchange data and recognize each other's digital applications.

With the exchange of data, only sick people are prohibited from traveling. Meanwhile, healthy people are still allowed to carry out activities outside the home so that the economy can continue to run.

He gave an example, if an Indonesian person goes to Japan, then the official in that country simply transfers the Peduli Protect application (owned by Indonesia) and no longer needs to download the application from the local country (Japan). And vice versa, when other countries come to Indonesia.

Research collaboration

One of the other key actions agreed at the Second G20 Health Ministers Meeting last October, was how after the completion of the Access to COVID-19 Tools-Accelerator (ACT-A) evaluation, G20 countries could continue to lead the formation of successor entities and functions for the sake of ensure the readiness of mechanisms to respond to future pandemics.

Interdisciplinary and cross-country collaboration is needed to ensure the prevention, preparedness and response to future pandemics. This kind of collaboration requires capacity building, scientific partnerships, and knowledge sharing efforts.

Kunta also emphasized the importance of building and strengthening a collaborative network of scientists in the field of public health emergencies.

The G20 Presidency in Indonesia, he continued, underlined the importance of surveillance (supervision), especially genomic surveillance using the One Health approach.

G20 countries support the timely exchange of pathogen data, on a trustworthy platform. In Indonesia, Kunta explained, initiating the Biomedical and Genome Science Initiative (BGS-i) to support better genomic surveillance in the future.

At the first Health Working Group meeting discussed the relevance of shared standards to ensure a smooth journey with shared recognition of vaccination certificates and interoperability, as well as mutual recognition of digital applications. Countries have agreed to the proposal and are currently exploring the best approach to meet this need, by conducting a series of virtual trials of technology due diligence, to establish a Federated Public Trust Directory for digital COVID-19 certificates.

At that time, Indonesia was selected as one of the recipients of WHO mRNA manufacturing. Following up on this, Indonesia and South Africa through Bio Farma and Afrigen developed cooperation in the production of an mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccine and cooperation in strengthening the WHO vaccine hub network.

Indonesia is in the process of developing a vaccine research and manufacturing center. And, identify potential partners to build vaccine research and manufacturing capacity, with national producer partnerships.

The Second G20 Health Ministers Meeting, G20 member countries, also agreed to carry out a gap analysis and mapping of existing and developing research, development and manufacturing networks as a first step to improve and expand research and production capacity for vaccines, therapeutics and diagnostics (VTD). The results of the discussion found seven interested G20 member countries, namely Argentina, Brazil, India, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and South Africa.