Living up to its reputation as the “pharmacy of the world,” India has played a leading role in supplying vaccine to more than 70 nations in the ongoing fight against the corona pandemic, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar said in the Rajya Sabha on Wednesday.
Lauding India’s initiative in practising people-centric diplomacy, the Elders urged the Government to supply the vaccine to poor countries. Addressing this concern, the Minister said the Indian vaccine was the cheapest in the world.
Making a statement on “Vaccine Maitri” initiative, Jaishankar said India’s reputation as “pharmacy of the world” stands reinforced the way it reached out to nations in the midst of a global crisis and supplied vaccines to 72 nations. It was appreciated by global leaders and world citizens and they extended warmth to India and its citizens.
Even as the Covid pandemic was in full fury, there were already global demands of India’s pharmaceutical and medical capabilities. This could be met largely due to the extraordinary ramp up of India’s Covid-related capabilities, Jaishankar said.
Talking about low fatality rates and the high recovery rates, he said: “Our reputation as the ‘pharmacy of the world’ has been reinforced. So indeed has the faith in ‘Make in India’. But more than the vaccines, our policies and conduct have emerged as a source of strength for the stressed and vulnerable nations of the world. They can see that there is at least one major nation that truly believes in making vaccines accessible and affordable to others in dire need.”
He said, “Vaccine Maitri” began in the immediate neighbourhood, starting with the Maldives, Bhutan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Myanmar, as also Mauritius and Seychelles and thereafter to the Gulf.
“Supplying smaller and more vulnerable nations was then the logic of reaching out to regions from Africa to the CARICOM-Caribbean Community. There was also contracts that our producers have entered into with other nations, either bilaterally or through the Covax initiative. To date, we have supplied ‘Made in India’ vaccines to 72 nations across geographies,” the Minister said.
Jaishankar said there was an external beneficial impact of India’s capabilities and it could meet the spiking requirements of hydroxychloroquine, paracetamol and other relevant drugs across the world and added that India’s domestic vaccination programme started in January and within a few days, it also started assisting our immediate neighbours.
Giving some details, he said, “In fact, we supplied 150 nations with medicines, 82 of them as grants by India. As our own production of masks, PPEs and diagnostic kits grew, we made them available to other nations. This generous approach... Was also extended to the Vande Bharat Mission. Starting from Wuhan, we brought back nationals of other countries while looking after our own.”
The Minister said as Indians, “we are all naturally internationalist by virtue of our culture, traditions, heritage and history and Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s vision has provided an over-arching framework to make India’s goodwill meaningful in terms of practical initiatives and activities that reflected in its humanitarian assistance and disaster responses, whether in Yemen, Nepal, Mozambique or Fiji.”
Jaishankar said the Prime Minister in his virtual address to the UN General Assembly in September 2020 had declared that India’s vaccine production and delivery capacity will be used to help all humanity in fighting this crisis.
“We also offered to enhance cold chain and storage capacities for the delivery of vaccines. This approach is not only in keeping with our age-old tradition of Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam.... As a prominent nation in an increasingly multi-polar world, the international community has greater expectations of us, and we, in turn, are prepared to demonstrate our willingness to shoulder greater responsibilities,” he said.
Moreover, as early as March 15, 2020, the Prime Minister took the initiative to hold a meeting of SAARC heads of Government to fashion a regional response resulting in SAARC Covid-19 Fund that supported the early exchanges on this issue.
Jairam Ramesh (Congress) and his colleague Anand Sharma urged the Government to highlight the role of various institutions in having a world class pharmaceutical industry over the last few decades.
Ramesh said initiatives like Patent Act and FERA in the 1970s besides public funding for institutions played a major role in propelling India to the forefront of the pharmacy. Binoy Viswam (CPI) said: “We did not become the pharmacy of India recently question about vaccine reach to the poor.
To these, Jaishankar replied, “You will recall the saying, success has many fathers. Too many fathers claiming success today... All of us know the enormous efforts of Government in getting vaccine prices lowered, lowest in the world.” He also said that he was proud to have taken Covaxin.
