India pledges $2B philanthropy for Covid care

New Delhi, Dec 12 : India pledged $2 billion out of $20.6 billion philanthropy funds for 2020-2021 to strengthen all levels of care in response to the Covid-19 pandemic and to ensure essential public health functions with an enhanced focus on women, children and adolescents and the most vulnerable.
The commitments were launched on Friday at “Lives in the Balance”, a global online summit to take stock of how Covid-19 is impacting the progress towards Universal Health Coverage.
The pandemic is threatening three decades of improvement in health and social services for women, newborns, children and adolescents.
The well-being of this vulnerable group is being more affected than others due to disruptions to essential health, nutrition and social services since the pandemic, according to senior health experts at The Partnership for Maternal, Newborn & Child Health (PMNCH), a global alliance of more than 1,000 organizations, hosted by the World Health Organization (WHO).
In a huge effort to restore crumbling services for women, newborns, children and adolescents, a group of high income, low- and middle-income countries and foundations are making pledges of $20.6 billion to protect this group.
$6.6 billion (32 per cent) of the total pledge is from money committed by low and middle-income countries themselves, including Afghanistan, India, Kenya, Liberia, and Nigeria.