PM joins banquet hosted by Biden

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina joined a banquet hosted by US President Joe Biden in honour of the world leaders attending the ongoing UNGA session in New York.

Biden hosted the banquet at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on Tuesday evening (New York time).

PM's daughter and Thematic Ambassador of the Climate Vulnerable Forum Saima Wazed accompanied the premier.

At the banquet, the PM exchanged pleasantries with the other world leaders.

In another development, Hasina yesterday morning urged the leaders to draw on collective lessons to scale up good practices and avoid past mistakes to face any future pandemic like Covid-19.

"Equity and solidarity must form the core of our efforts," she told a high-level meeting on Pandemic Prevention, Preparedness, and Response at UN Headquarters.

To achieve that target, she flagged five priorities.

These are concessional international financing for health system strengthening in developing countries; mobilising resources and expertise for pandemic surveillance, prevention, preparedness, and response in a science-based manner; ensuring equitable and unrestricted access for all to quality, affordable, and effective pandemic products, including vaccines; production diversification of pandemic products through access to technology and know-how; and developing an international cooperation framework for access and benefit sharing among concerned parties, with WHO in the lead.

"To that end, we hope to see fair and concrete outcomes from a pandemic treaty and amendments to the International Health Regulations (2005). Bangladesh will remain constructively engaged with both processes," said Hasina.

She said the pandemic has been a turning point for all.

"We lost many around the world. We realised that nature has its own limits for human intervention. We also experienced unprecedented global solidarity. We admitted that none of us is secure until everyone is."

Hasina mentioned Bangladesh was no exception to the Covid-19 impacts.

"Yet, we ranked fifth globally in Covid-19 recovery by one index. From the start, we had to strike a balance between saving lives and protecting livelihoods," she said.

She said they adopted a National Preparedness and Response Plan with the support of WHO.

She mentioned that from zero facilities, testing laboratories were set up in 885 centres. Oxygen supplies were secured in almost all hospitals. About 11,000 doctors and 13,000 medical support staff were recruited within months. With a fatality rate of 1.46 percent, the frontline workers did wonders.

She also said that a dedicated digital app was launched to administer vaccines entirely free of charge.

PM GETS BROWN UNIVERSITY HONOUR

Hasina was accorded special honour by Brown University on Tuesday (New York time) as the UN recognised her brainchild community clinic model to reach healthcare services to the Bangladesh people's doorsteps.

Her Deputy Press Secretary Md Noorelahi Mina told a press briefing.

Mukesh K Jain, senior vice-president for health affairs and dean of medicine and biological sciences of The Warren Alpert Medical School of the university, handed over a citation to the PM at her place of residence, The Lotte New York Hotel.