Bill Gates has ‘One Health Mission’ on his menu

New Delhi: Bill Gates, co-chair and trustee of the Gates Foundation, today expressed interest in supporting the Government of India’s efforts on the upcoming One Health Mission and the power of environmental surveillance for disease control. 

Gates, who called on Professor Ajay K Sood, the Principal Scientific Adviser to the Government of India, had discussions with him to understand priorities and explore further collaborations.

During his visit, Prof. Sood gave an overview of the work of the Office of PSA’s wide-ranging engagements, including the National Missions on One Health, Quantum Technologies, Livelihood, Green Hydrogen, and One Nation One Subscription, among others. The discussion focused majorly on priority engagements of the One Health Mission, and Waste to Wealth Mission with the Foundation.

It may be mentioned that the ‘One Health Mission’, has been recommended by the Prime Minister’s Science, Technology, and Innovation Advisory Council (PM-STIAC)  to coordinate, support, and integrate all the existing One Health activities in the country and fill gaps where it is appropriate. There are many One Health efforts underway in various Ministries of the Government of India, in private organizations in addition to a range of activities globally. The major deliverable of the One Health mission is a unified pandemic preparedness plan.

The Waste to Wealth Mission aims to identify, test, Validate and deploy technologies to treat waste to generate energy, recycle materials, extract resources of value and provide a technology database of national and international technologies to support Urban Local Bodies address their waste challenges.

Gates appreciated the focus on science and technology initiatives. He stressed the need for innovations to address animal health, disease modelling and novel diagnostics technologies. He further emphasised the opportunity for India to support both domestic and global challenges in these areas.

Gates was accompanied by Dr Trevor Mundel, President of Global Health, Hari Menon, Country Director-India, and Harish Iyer, Deputy Director, Digital and Health Innovation. They met Dr (Mrs) Parvinder Maini, Scientific Secretary, Office of the PSA; Dr Preeti Banzal; Adviser/Scientist ‘G’; Dr Monoranjan Mohanty, Adviser/Scientist ‘G’; Dr Ketaki Bapat, Adviser/Scientist ‘G’; Dr Sindura Ganapathi, Visiting PSA Fellow; Dr Sapna Poti, Director, Strategic Alliances Division and other officials.