Tashkent: The Secretary General of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) Helga Schmid will visit Uzbekistan in November to attend the conference dedicated to the 10th anniversary of the joint implementation of the UN Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy in Central Asia, the press service of the Senate said.

On November 7, the speaker of the upper house of parliament, Tanzila Narbaeva, met with the head of the OSCE as part of the visit of the parliamentary delegation of Uzbekistan to Vienna to attend the Summit of Women Speakers and the World Conference of Speakers of Parliaments.

During the meeting Helga Schmid told about the OSCE’s decision to co-organize the conference on the UN Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy. Within the framework of the visit, Helga Schmid also intends to hold a number of meetings with officials of Uzbekistan.

At the meeting, the Chairperson of the Senate and the Head of the OSCE discussed the prospects for deepening cooperation between Uzbekistan and the OSCE to promote gender equality issues and enhance the role of youth. The OSCE Secretary General spoke in favor of stepping up cooperation on issues of support for youth and full disclosure of its potential.

Helga Schmid was appointed head of the OSCE in December 2020. Prior to her appointment, she served as Secretary General of the European External Action Service.

As previously reported, the UN Deputy Secretary General, Executive Secretary of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime Ghada Wali will also visit Uzbekistan in November, and the signing of a new UNODC regional program for 2022-2025 is expected.

BAKU: Azerbaijan, Turkey and Pakistan will hold joint military drills from Sept. 12-20 in Baku, Azerbaijan’s defence ministry said on Saturday, the first such drills between the three countries.

The goal of the “Three Brothers – 2021” exercises is to improve cooperation between their special forces and to share knowledge and experience, the ministry said in a statement.

Turkey and Azerbaijan held joint live-fire drills in Baku earlier this year.

Ankara last year backed Azerbaijan‘s effort to drive occupying Armenian forces out of the Upper Karabakh region where pro-Yerevan militants had illegally controlled since the 1990s.

ISLAMABAD, SEPT 11 (DNA) – The School of Public Health and Center for Contemporary South at Brown University held a day-long conference on COVID-19 and South Asia. Senator Dr. Sania Nishtar, SAPM was invited to speak at the “Lunch Time Plenary: COVID-19 in Pakistan”. Dr. Sania shared lessons from Pakistan.

Speakers from South Asia including those from Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and India joined virtually. Other speakers joined from Brown University; Yale University; and Harvard University, and civil society organizations.

The “Lunch Time Plenary: COVID-19 in Pakistan” was followed a moderated conversation between Dr. Sania, and speakers from Brown and Harvard.

Speaking on the occasion, Dr. Sania said, “Pakistan fared much better than other countries in the region, with respect to its response to COVID-19. Pakistan’s success so far has been due to a number of factors, namely, high level political attention and  support for needed action; a very careful balancing, health vs-a-vis livelihoods overseen and led by the Prime Minister himself, a whole of Government and whole of society mobilization, and institutional approach to multi-sectoral coordination”, she said further adding, “the data driven decision making and accountability for actions led by the National Command and Control Center, the use of the entire might of the government for the response, the economic measure taken and the large package of assistance in the shape of Ehsaas Emergency Cash, contributed to the success. However, we are currently experiencing the fourth wave, so there is no space for complacency.”

Recently, Pakistan has also been ranked the third best worldwide, in terms of its effective management of the pandemic. Also, according to the World Bank, Ehsaas emergency Cash was the third largest programme in terms of percentage of population covered, and fastest globally in terms of the speed of disbursement of cash to COVID-19 livelihood affectees.

The experience of Ehsaas in terms of the SMS based request seeking mechanism was vital to the construct of the COVID-19 vaccination mechanism. “The Ehsaas SMS identity is 8171 whereas the COVID-19 vaccination system modelled on it is 1166”.

The conference focused on variations in country responses. The pandemic affected all countries, but the outcomes varied significantly. Suffering in some countries was substantially greater, as was also true of the levels of suffering in different parts of a given country.

Speakers emphasized that government policies, the strength of public health systems, citizen mobilization, vaccine availability and administration have all mattered in different ways. We need to begin to understand how these various factors, and potentially others, came together to generate the outcomes we have thus far observed.

Pakistan has vaccinated over 65.5 million doses of the vaccine; more than 21 million people are fully vaccinated, and the target is to vaccinate nearly 70 million people by the end of the year.