• The first meeting of BIMSTEC health ministers was held on November 11 in Colombo, Sri Lanka.
• It marks a historic step towards expanding regional cooperation in health under BIMSTEC.
• The meeting brought together health ministers and senior representatives from Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Myanmar, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Thailand.
• Union Health Minister J.P. Nadda represented India at the meeting.
• The ministers adopted a joint ministerial statement and a revised public health action plan.
• The joint statement envisages exploring a BIMSTEC Digital Health Framework to promote telemedicine, interoperable electronic health records and the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in diagnostics and disease modelling.
• The revised BIMSTEC Plan of Action on Public Health (2026-2030), providing a structured roadmap for cooperation in disease surveillance, pandemic preparedness, digital health, traditional medicine, One Health and healthcare workforce development.
• Nadda announced India’s commitment to hosting the BIMSTEC Centre of Excellence in Traditional Medicine at the Institute of Teaching and Research in Ayurveda (ITRA), Jamnagar, Gujarat.
• The Centre is envisaged as a regional platform for collaborative research, academic exchanges, institutional partnerships, capacity building and the sharing of traditional medicine knowledge and best practices.
• India’s proposal to host the next meeting of the BIMSTEC Task Force on Traditional Medicine was also welcomed.
• Thailand will host the second BIMSTEC Health Ministers’ Meeting in 2028.
• The Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC) comprises India, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Bhutan and Nepal.
• It is a regional bloc comprising seven countries lying in the littoral and adjacent areas of the Bay of Bengal constituting a contiguous regional unity.
• This sub-regional organisation came into being on June 6, 1997 through the Bangkok Declaration. It constitutes five countries from South Asia (Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal and Sri Lanka) and two from Southeast Asia (Myanmar and Thailand).
• Initially, the economic bloc was formed with four member states with the acronym BIST-EC (Bangladesh, India, Sri Lanka and Thailand Economic Cooperation). Following the inclusion of Myanmar on December 22, 1997 during a special ministerial meeting in Bangkok, the group was renamed BIMSTEC (Bangladesh, India, Myanmar, Sri Lanka and Thailand Economic Cooperation).
• With the admission of Nepal and Bhutan at the sixth ministerial meeting in February 2004, the name of the grouping was changed to Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC).
• The BIMSTEC region is home to about 1.8 billion people, accounting for about 22 per cent of the global population with a combined GDP of $4.5 trillion.
• The BIMSTEC Secretariat is situated in Dhaka.
• India has been pushing for making BIMSTEC a vibrant forum as various regional initiatives under South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) were not moving forward primarily due to non-cooperation from Pakistan.
• For India, BIMSTEC is a natural choice to take forward key foreign policy priorities like ‘Neighbourhood First’ and ‘Act East’ as the bloc enjoys the strength of connecting South and Southeast Asia.
• Initially, six sectors — trade, technology, energy, transport, tourism and fisheries — were included for sectoral cooperation. It was later expanded to 14 areas of cooperation.
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