COVID-19 gives new dimension to India-UAE medical diplomacy

Dubai: With the COVID-19 pandemic giving a new dimension to India-UAE medical diplomacy, top diplomats, health officials and healthcare giants have vouched to boost the bilateral cooperation in the medical field.

The message was conveyed loud and clear at the ‘UAE-India Health Conference 2020’ held on Monday.

“In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic situation, there is a new dimension of medical diplomacy between the UAE and India,” pointed out the UAE Ambassador to India Dr. Ahmed Al Banna.

“We have imported medicines from India and we were able to get special permission for importing hydroxychloroquine and for medical staff to come to the UAE to support our existing healthcare platform,” he explained.

“While the Indian government assisted and facilitated through the embassy and the consulate for the repatriation of Indians, we worked very closely with the Indian Ministry of External Affairs for repatriation of the UAE nationals in the second week of April.”

Though both the countries enjoy a comprehensive strategic relationship, Al Banna observed that there is still huge untapped potential in the field of healthcare, medicine and related sectors where the countries can further boost the collaborations.

Echoing the same, Indian Ambassador to the UAE Pavan Kapoor stated that the UAE had shown strong desire for setting up manufacturing facilities for vaccines and generic medicines by Indian companies having strong Research and Development facilities.

“The UAE government will provide incentives, including financial contributions and will also make efforts to create a full ecosystem to support such healthcare manufacturing companies from India,” he said, urging Indian companies to look into this offer, which will provide them an excellent opportunity to enter into GCC as well as African markets in entire pharma supply chain ecosystem.

Policymakers, health executives, and eminent leaders from the health care and allied industries of both nations exchanged ideas on exploring new avenues for partnership during the virtual conference.

Humaid Al Qutami, director general of Dubai Health Authority highlighted areas such as innovation, research and development, medical education and training as well as telehealth, where there is a strong potential for further collaboration.

Contribution of India in UAE’s medical sector

Abdulla Ali Al Mahyan, chairman, Sharjah Health Authority, and Dr Amin Hussain Al Amiri, assistant undersecretary of Health Policy and Licensing at UAE Ministry of Health and Prevention stressed on the historic and strategic relationship that exists between both the nations.

Dr Al Amiri said a huge number of medical professionals in the UAE are from India. “Thirty per cent of medical professionals in our government sector and 42 per cent of them in the private sector are from India.”

Apart from the man power, he said more than 10 percent of medical factories the UAE is dealing with worldwide are located in India.

“There are 2300 manufacturing factories that have been registered with us and 256 of them are from India.”

Close to 10,000 registered medical products in the UAE are from India. Dr Al Amiri said 10 per cent of conventional medicines, 26 per cent of medicines from natural sources and six per cent of biologic drugs and biosimilars in the UAE are from India.

Majority of the factories in the UAE also depend on raw materials from India to produce 1600 medicines, he revealed.

“We have a great cooperation with India. Therefore, the chances are more, the opportunities are there and we look forward to supporting any Indian pharma or medical industry to invest with us,” he added.

Dr Abdul Salam Al Madani, executive chairman of UAE’s Waterfalls initiative that aims to train one million healthcare professionals across the world, said the country was looking forward to collaborating with Indian medical professionals for joining the initiative as both trainers and trainees. He added that there was a need to further strengthen business relations with India.

Boosting healthcare collaborations

Dr Sangita Reddy, president, Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) and joint managing director, Apollo Hospitals Group, said, “As the world fights COVID, this is an opportune time for us to go beyond a conference to forge firmer collaborations in the medical field.”

She also put forward a proposal for medical professionals accredited in India to be automatically recognised in the UAE.

Consul General of India in Dubai Dr Aman Puri said the conference became all the more relevant as key stakeholders from the UAE and India healthcare landscapes joined together to deliberate on exploring new avenues for partnership between the two countries.

Dr Praveen Gedam, additional CEO of National Health Authority in India, Dr Azad Moopen, chairman and managing director, Aster DM Healthcare; Dr Shamsheer Vayalil, chairman and MD, VPS Healthcare Group, Girish Krishnamurty, CEO and Director- Tata Medical and Diagnostics, Dr Akbar Moideen, vice-president, Thumbay Group; Dr Viren Shetty from Narayana Hrudayalaya; Sophiya Faizal, director, KEF Holdings (Meitra Hospital), and Dr Taher Shams, MD Zulekha India, made presentations on opportunities in healthcare in the UAE and India.

India’s low-cost paper-based Feluda COVID-19 test

Meanwhile, a low-cost, paper-based COVID-19 test recently approved by the Indian government was highlighted by a top executive of the Tata group, which developed the test.

Speaking at the conference, Girish Krishnamurthy, CEO of Tata Medical and Diagnostics (Tata MD), said the company has received “various interests from the UAE” for ‘Feluda,’ the Tata CRISPR (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats) COVID-19 test.

An acronym for FNCAS9 Editor-Limited Uniform Detection Assay, Feluda is also named after the famous fictional Bengali sleuth who popularly appeared in novels by noted author-cum-film director Satyajit Ray.

The test method is expected to be a game changer in testing the pandemic disease replacing the costly and time-consuming RT-PCR (Reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction) test which is currently considered the gold standard in COVID-19 testing, said Krishnamurthy.

“A lot of laboratories and hospitals are in conversation with us, not only from India, globally. We have various interests coming in from the UAE,” he said.

The Indian government approved the commercial launch of Feluda on September 20.

Benefits of the test

CRISPR is a genome editing technology to diagnose diseases. The Tata CRISPR test is said to have achieved accuracy levels of traditional RT-PCR tests with quicker turnaround time, less expensive equipment and better ease of use.

Krishnamurthy said the test is simple, reliable and highly scalable. RT-PCR requires an expensive equipment which is not required in the case of Feluda, he said.

“The turn-around time is very quick. In 45 minutes you can complete a viral test, a nucleic acid test and more importantly have a tamper-proof result. We have an audit trail on every result through a paper strip.”

Krishnamurthy said the company has set up a large plant to produce a large volume of the test kit to meet the demand in India and globally.

“The whole product was tested on several thousands of real life samples in India before the government of India’s approval.”

He said the company is currently in a major production mode.

“We are looking to offer this to the world by the end of this month. From that point of time, we will start producing significantly a large volume for the world…In next two-three months I believe that we will be in a position to handle the Indian demand as well as the global demand.”

In response to a question from Gulf News about the supply of Feluda to the UAE market, the Indian Consulate in Dubai said the company is understood to be filing for the necessary approvals for the supply of the test kits to various countries including the UAE.

“It will be launched globally once the approvals are in place,” the mission said.