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BRICS countries meeting on the sidelines of World Health Assembly 2012

1. The BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China , South Africa) countries met on 22 May 2012 at a luncheon hosted by Ambassador Dilip Sinha, Permanent Representative of India to the UN in Geneva. Dr. Alexandre Padilha, Minister of Health of Brazil, Prof. Chen Zhu, Minister of Health of China and Dr. Aaron Mottsoaledi, Minister of Health of South Africa, Mr. Alexey Borodavkin, Permanent Representative of the Russian Federation and Mr. P.K. Pradhan, Secretary of Health & Family Welfare, Government of India, along with their country health representatives participated in the meeting.

2. The Member-States exchanged views on the areas of cooperation in the health sector amongst BRICS countries and reiterated their commitment to the BRICS mechanism and share views in areas beneficial to the people of the BRICS Member-States as well as globally.

3. During the course of the meeting, a Joint Communiqué was adopted by the Member-States (copy attached).

4. Areas identified for cooperation included:-
a) addressing common challenges such as universal access to health services
b) access to health technologies and generic medicines,
c) cooperation in the area of drug discovery and development, especially TB, malaria, neglected diseases as well as non- communicable diseases .

5. It was also announced that a meeting of the Technical Group will be convened within the next months in line with the Beijing Declaration.

6. Following the Delhi Plan of Action which was adopted as part of the Delhi Declaration at the Fourth BRICS Summit (Delhi, 29 March 2012), the Second BRICS Health Ministers meeting will be hosted by India in November, 2012.