Dhaka, Delhi to talk health

India and Bangladesh will discuss bilateral health cooperation in their first joint working group (JWG) meeting beginning in New Delhi on Wednesday.

Senior Correspondentbdnews24.com
Published : 25 Feb 2014, 02:33 PM
Updated : 25 Feb 2014, 02:33 PM

The group has been formed after Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s visit in September 2011 to Dhaka where he and Sheikh Hasina discussed the creation of a mechanism to train Bangladeshi doctors in India’s top medical institutes.

Additional Secretaries of the health ministry would lead the two sides in the two-day meeting that would discuss exchange of visits, development of human resources for health and cross-border health issues.

The Bangladesh delegation will also visit several health related institutions and organisations during the visit, the Indian High Commission in Dhaka said.

Earlier, Indian High Commissioner in Dhaka Pankaj Saran had said India wished to work closely with Bangladesh’s health sector, urging medical practitioners to come up with suggestions in this connection.

Thousands of Bangladeshi patients go to India for treatment, but there had been no bilateral cooperation as of today.

However, there have been exchanges of visits among the Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University, All India Institute of Medical Sciences in Delhi and Postgraduate Medical and Educational Research at Chandigarh.