The first BIMSTEC Health Ministers’ Meeting was held in Colombo, Sri Lanka, on November 11, 2026. It brought together health ministers and senior representatives from all seven member countries: Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Myanmar, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Thailand.
The meeting adopted a Joint Ministerial Statement and the Revised BIMSTEC Plan of Action on Public Health (2026–2030). It was chaired by Sri Lanka’s Minister of Health and Mass Media, Dr Nalinda Jayatissa.
The next ministerial meeting is to be held in Thailand in 2028, and ministers are to meet every two years. India was represented by Union Health and Family Welfare Minister Jagat Prakash Nadda and Nepal by Health Minister Nisha Mehta. >The first BIMSTEC Senior Health Officials’ Meeting took place the day before, on November 10, also in Colombo. Officials from all seven countries reviewed regional cooperation, traditional medicine, public health capacity building, cancer care, disease surveillance and specialised centres, and finalised the draft Joint Ministerial Statement and agenda.
BIMSTEC was founded on June 6, 1997 through the Bangkok Declaration and links five South Asian countries with two in Southeast Asia. Its seven members together have more than 1.8 billion people and a combined GDP above US$4.5 trillion. Health became part of its cooperation agenda in 2005, at first mostly on traditional medicine, and became a formal sub-sector in 2022. Leaders at the sixth summit in Bangkok in April 2025 backed a dedicated ministerial mechanism for health.
What the plan covers
The summaries of the meeting’s outcome name these priorities:
• Disease surveillance and early warning: better detection, reporting and sharing of information on outbreaks.
• Pandemic preparedness and emergency response: coordinated planning, technical cooperation and stronger health infrastructure.
• Antimicrobial resistance: cooperation against pathogens that stop responding to medicines, especially antibiotics.
• Digital health: exploring a BIMSTEC Digital Health Framework covering telemedicine, interoperable electronic health records and artificial intelligence in diagnosis and disease modelling.
• One Health: linking human, animal and environmental health in prevention and preparedness.
• Traditional medicine: joint research, exchange, training and responsible preservation of traditional knowledge.
• Climate-related health responses: preparing for the effect of climate change on public health and healthcare infrastructure.
• Workforce and capacity building: technical training, knowledge sharing and research.
Surveillance, pandemics and resistance
Diseases spread across borders through air travel, trade, migration, tourism and the movement of livestock and wildlife. Examples of threats in the region include dengue, malaria, tuberculosis, cholera, avian influenza, Nipah virus and COVID-19 or influenza.
The statement supported Bangladesh’s proposal for a Regional Zoonotic Disease Observatory and Early Warning System. A zoonotic disease spreads between animals and humans, such as rabies, avian influenza or Nipah. The proposal was welcomed.
The pandemic work builds on earlier steps. In July 2023 the first BIMSTEC Expert Group on Public Health met in Colombo and finalised a 2023–2025 Plan of Action and a memorandum of understanding between the BIMSTEC Secretariat and the World Bank on pandemic prevention, preparedness, response and health-system resilience. A second expert group met on May 12 and 13, 2026, reviewed that plan and discussed the 2026–2030 framework. It also discussed operating a Project Management Unit at the Secretariat with World Bank support.
Digital health and India’s contribution
Telemedicine could matter for remote mountain and island communities. Electronic health records that can talk to each other would need rules on consent, data protection, confidentiality, cybersecurity and national control of data, and the statement does not mean the seven countries will exchange personal medical records. AI in diagnosis would need validation, regulation and human oversight.
Nadda described India’s programmes: more than 185,000 Ayushman Arogya Mandirs, Ayushman Bharat PM-JAY, which covers hospital care of up to ₹500,000 per eligible family a year, more than 500 million eSanjeevani teleconsultations and the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission.
Centres of excellence
• Sri Lanka: a proposed Regional Centre of Excellence for Public Health
• Thailand: an established Centre of Excellence on Tropical Medicine, at Mahidol University’s Faculty of Tropical Medicine
• India: a new commitment to host a BIMSTEC Centre of Excellence in Traditional Medicine at the Institute of Teaching and Research in Ayurveda in Jamnagar, Gujarat, for joint research, exchange, training and quality and safety standards. India also offered to host the next meeting of the BIMSTEC Task Force on Traditional Medicine, which held its seventh meeting in Colombo in November 2025.
• Bangladesh: the proposed zoonotic observatory
The Sri Lankan and Indian centres and the Bangladeshi observatory should not be called operating BIMSTEC institutions until they are formally set up and resourced.
Nepal’s role
Health Minister Nisha Mehta set out Nepal’s priorities: infectious disease control, zoonotic disease prevention, antimicrobial resistance, the health effects of climate change, preparedness for emergencies, fair access to quality care, and resilient health systems and digital technology. She held talks with other delegations. In her meeting with Nadda, the two discussed stronger bilateral and regional cooperation and affordable, accessible, quality healthcare, and India repeated its interest in working with Nepal under its Neighbourhood First approach. No new grant, ambulance allocation or specific health project for Nepal was announced.
Climate and health matter for Nepal because floods, landslides and heat can cause injuries, damage hospitals and spread waterborne and mosquito-borne diseases. Nepal could also benefit from training in Thailand, from the Indian traditional medicine centre and from cross-border disease alerts, though none of this is yet arranged.
Bilateral deals on the sidelines
On November 11, India and Sri Lanka exchanged a memorandum of understanding for 100 more fully equipped ambulances for Sri Lanka’s 1990 Suwa Seriya service. The Indian grant is LKR 1,725.73 million, about US$5.28 million, and the aim is response times under 10 minutes. Indian High Commissioner Santosh Jha and Sri Lankan Health Ministry Secretary Dr Anil Jasinghe signed it.
India has supported the service since 2016 and has already funded 297 ambulances. India also announced a grant of up to LKR 225 million for 50 medical kiosks, or Health ATMs, at Sri Lanka’s Arogya Primary Health Centres, offering point-of-care tests and telemedicine, part of a US$450 million rehabilitation package after Cyclone Ditwah in November to December 2025. These are bilateral deals, not seven-country commitments.
Things to watch include whether the Bangladeshi observatory starts, whether common outbreak-notification rules are agreed, whether the Digital Health Framework moves beyond exploration, whether the Sri Lankan and Indian centres get funding and approval, and the second ministerial meeting in Thailand in 2028.
