The 1st MIKTA Foreign Affairs and Health 2+2 Senior Officials’ Meeting (Videoconference, 26 November 2020)

The five member states of MIKTA — the Republic of Korea, the United Mexican States, the Republic of Indonesia, the Republic of Turkey and the Commonwealth of Australia — held the 1st MIKTA Foreign Affairs and Health 2+2 Senior Officials’ Meeting (SOM) at 04:00(UTC), November 26, presided by Deputy Minister for Multilateral and Global Affairs of the ROK Ministry of Foreign Affairs Ham Sang-wook, and discussed ways to strengthen the global health system as well as ways for collaboration among the five MIKTA countries.

The MIKTA Foreign Affairs and Health SOM leaders stressed that it is an urgent matter to improve and reinforce the current global health system, which is led by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the International Health Regulations (IHR), in order to overcome the COVID-19 pandemic and to prepare for similar health crises, and agreed to step up cooperation in relevant discussions of the international community as well as in the overall areas of infectious diseases and health and medical care.

The 2+2 SOM is seen to have served as an opportunity to lay the groundwork for reinforcing collaboration on health security through a nexus among the foreign and health authorities of the major middle power countries representing various regions of the world, amid the rapidly growing demand for international health cooperation due to the prolonged global health crisis.