Russia to suggest BRICS discussion of effort against infectious diseases, epidemics - Putin

MOSCOW, September 1. /TASS/. At the upcoming BRICS summit in China, Russia will suggest its partners to discuss measures to reduce the threat of infectious diseases and epidemics, Russian President Vladimir Putin said in his article in the run-up of the BRICS summit published on Friday. "We propose discussing at the upcoming summit a package of measures to reduce the threat of infectious diseases and to create new medicines to prevent and fight epidemics," Putin said in his article, headlined "BRICS: Towards New Horizons of Strategic Partnership," to be published by the leading media of the BRICS states (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) ahead of the group’s summit due on September 3-5 in China. He added that Moscow views cooperation with its BRICS partners in science, technology, innovations and cutting edge medicine as one of its priorities for cooperation. "Our countries have a big potential in this respect that comprises a solid and mutually complementary research base, unique technical achievements, skilled personnel and huge markets for science-intensive products," Putin said. The head of the Russian state also drew attention to Russia’s proposal to set up a BRICS Energy Research Platform. "We believe that this would enable us to coordinate our information, analysis and research activities in the interests of the five BRICS countries and would ultimately facilitate the implementation of joint energy investment projects," he said. According to the Russian leader, another important task of the BRICS group of nations was to set up cooperation in the area of small and medium-sized enterprises (SME). "We believe that we should integrate the national SMEs’ online resources for placing crosslinks and other commercial information and for exchanging data on reliable partners," Putin said. Read more