India to send additional medical teams in DR Congo and South Sudan in response to UN call

India has mobilized all efforts to assemble two teams of medical specialists to be deployed in the Hospitals at the UN Missions in DRCongo and South Sudan to mitigate and contain the COVID-19 outbreak at these two locations.

India’s Permanent Representative to UN T S Tirumurti on Friday tweeted, “In response to request of UN Secretary General, India is rushing two medical teams to Africa to strengthen Indian peacekeeping hospitals – one in Goma, DRCongo and other in Juba, South Sudan.”
The two medical teams of 15 medical personnel each at Goma (DRC) and Juba (South Sudan) will be deployed in the second half of September 2020.
Both the medical facilities are managed by Indian peacekeepers. As the COVID outbreak has spread in these regions, the UN Secretary-General has decided to scale up the Level-2 and Level-3 hospital facilities in UNMISS (South Sudan) and MONUSCO (Democratic Republic of Congo) respectively.
The main hub of the command and control centre of MONUSCO is located in Goma, DRC. The Hospital by India in Goma, operational since January 2005, has 90 Indian nationals including 18 specialists. Given the rising COVID cases in the area, the “Level-3” facility, which is the highest level of medical care provided by a deployed UN unit, will now further be upgraded to a Level-3 Plus facility.
The “Level-2 plus” Hospital by India in Juba, South Sudan (UNMISS), operational since December 2016, has 77 Indian nationals including 12 specialists. The Indian facility in Juba is presently the one of highest level of medical facilities existing in South Sudan. This facility will now be upgraded from Level-2 plus to a Level-3 facility.

MTaI welcomes CDSCO notice addressing challenges and furthering Ease of doing business for medical device sector

Medical Technology Association of India, which represents leading research-based medical technology companies with significant investments in manufacturing, today, welcomed two CDSCO notices which address operational and regulatory challenges faced by the medical device industry.

MTaI had apprised the Central Drugs Standard Control Organization (CDSCO) regarding the issues faced in the SUGAM portal in the post approval change (PAC) submission in changing the name or address of the authorized agent and the challenges in procuring notarized documents for medical devices and site registration due to the current pandemic situation. CDSCO has published two notices on August 31, 2020 to address these issues.

“With India entering Unlock 4.0, normal medical device business is resuming very slowly. This pace is further slowed because of the several operational bottlenecks which continue to impede smooth functioning of business. In these conditions, it is reassuring that CDSCO has taken cognizance of the challenges faced by the medical device industry and expeditiously moved to resolve them. This will undoubtedly further the cause of ease of doing business in the country” said Mr Choudary, Director General, MTaI.