Events
Past Events
Winning Against COVID-19 Roadshow in partnership with USAID – 26 October 2021
AMCHAM, in partnership with USAID/India organized the Winning Against COVID-19 Roadshow on October 26th. The objective of the roadshow was to mobilize private sector resources and capabilities to scale up vaccination initiatives in India. USAID has been partnering with the Government of India for nearly 70 years to address a range of public health and other development challenges, and shares India’s philosophy to engage the private sector as a partner in this journey. To accelerate the pace of vaccinations, 20 major corporations in AMCHAM’s network with a strong commitment towards the cause were recruited to participate.
In her welcome remarks, Ms. Sangita Patel, Director, Health Office USAID/India, mentioned that USAID has been very closely working with national and state governments, corporations, business associations and civil society organizations to accelerate COVID-19 vaccination efforts by supporting innovative demand and delivery options for some of the most vulnerable and hard to reach populations. Mr. Abhishek Gopalka, Managing Director and Partner, BCG and Mr. Salil Gupte, Chairman, AMCHAM and President, Boeing India, talked about India’s vaccination journey and the role corporates have.
Opportunities for the private sector were presented by the following:
- Mr. Shiv Kumar, Co-Founder, Catalyst Group, Chief Integrator, COVID Action Collab spoke on VaxNow vaccine camps focused on vulnerable population groups. This initiative will leverage corporate social responsibility funds to support on-ground civil society organizations, to improve access to vaccines to rural and most vulnerable populations.
- Dr. Sanjay Kapur, Managing Director, JSI India spoke on vaccinations via mobile vans. Mobile vaccinations will leverage mobile units and medical staff from private players, and vaccines from government sources to increase vaccine access for last mile populations.
- Dr. Brian Wahl, Assistant Scientist, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health spoke on demand generation across the nation via a multimodal media campaign including social media and grassroots to address hesitancies by leveraging private sector capabilities across media and customer behavior insights.
The panel discussion was moderated by Mr. Arvind Kumar, Senior Advisor, Strategic Partnerships, USAID/India with panelists Ms. Remya Mohan, Mission Director, National Health Mission, Govt. of Gujarat, Mr. Ankur Malhotra, Chairman – COVID-19 Disaster Relief Management Task Force, AMCHAM, Head Corporate Affairs, CSR, Hewlett Packard Enterprise India and Dr. Raj Shankar Ghosh, Senior Adviser, Vaccine Delivery & Infectious Diseases, BMGF.
This was the first in a series of roadshows to engage the private sector to mitigate the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic. Similar roadshows would be organized in the coming months, focused on additional pandemic resilience efforts. The event was attended by 50 plus participants.
Resources shared during the roadshow include:
