Fighting Covid-19 together

How surrealistic it is that deadly coronavirus (Covid-19) has played the role of a catalyst to thaw the long-frozen Pakistan-India relationship: India's prime minister Narendra Modi proposed a video-conference of fellow Saarc heads of government to hammer out a "collaborative approach" to fight the menace. And they promptly responded - actualizing their first meeting at this high level since 2014. Narendra Modi might have been motivated by his longing to be the region's monitor, but given the ferocity of the virus threat such an exchange of views was timely and it merited on its own. At the conference, the Indian prime minister "offered to collaborate, rather than grow apart". Special assistant to prime minister Dr Zafar Mirza had a doctor's prescription to deal with the malady of divisive ambience obtaining between Pakistan and India. He reportedly told prime minister Modi that lockdown in occupied Jammu & Kashmir should be ended to help fight the coronavirus outbreak.

Given their porous borders, the coronavirus would feel free to travel from one Saarc country to the other without much of hassle. So, there must be a joint defence against the deadly virus. How to go about that the India's prime minister underscored the need for setting up an emergency fund to fight the coronavirus outbreak in South Asia, with India pledging $10 million towards Covid-19 fund.

But, on the ground, situation is profoundly profound. The virus travels through human contact, and that calls for securing international borders, averting mass gatherings, ensuring prompt diagnostics and efficient hospitalization. Even if foreign help and guidance may be available the concerned government got to fight the battle against the coronavirus on its own. According to Dr Mirza, the government's response strategy has four pillars - governance and financing, prevention, mitigation and communication. And Prime Minister Imran Khan is "personally" overseeing these efforts, he said, but gave no clue as to why the PM - unlike top leaders of rest of the Saarc countries - did not join the video-conference. Be that as it may, Pakistan wants that instead of New Delhi, the Saarc Secretariat should act as a platform for regional efforts to fight the pandemic. Keeping that in mind Dr Mirza plausibly reiterated Pakistan's earlier proposal of hosting Saarc region. He underscored the need for developing a "regional mechanism" for sharing "disease surveillance data, prevalence and incidence of communicable diseases and public health events of regional significance."