TY - JOUR T1 - Stronger together: a new pandemic agenda for South Asia JF - BMJ Global Health JO - BMJ Global Health DO - 10.1136/bmjgh-2021-006776 VL - 6 IS - 8 SP - e006776 AU - Shashika Bandara AU - Soumyadeep Bhaumik AU - Veena Sriram AU - Senjuti Saha AU - Nukhba Zia AU - Md Zabir Hasan AU - Gathsaurie Neelika Malavige AU - Drona Rasali Y1 - 2021/08/01 UR - http://gh.bmj.com/content/6/8/e006776.abstract N2 - The global increase in COVID-19 cases in 2021 has primarily been due to an uncontrolled surge in South Asia. It is estimated that by 1 September 2021, approximately 1.4 million in South Asians will die due to COVID-19 alone.1 The total number of excess deaths will be much higher—including non-COVID causes, as health systems are on the brink of collapse.2 With 33.4% of South Asians being extremely poor3 and the large-scale loss of livelihood being reported, the region faces a potentially catastrophic future for the ongoing decade.4 However, countries in South Asia continue to remain divisive. This differs from other geographic ‘blocs’ that frequently cooperate on mutual interest issues.5 Tensions in South Asia are shaped by complex domestic, bilateral, intra-regional and international geopolitical factors, despite the region’s obvious geographic, economic and cultural interdependence. A key lesson from the current pandemic is that countries need to share lessons and actively coordinate, complement and supplement each other’s public health responses, especially between neighbours. We present a pragmatic ‘Stronger Together’ agenda (table 1) on critical areas of concern for political, social, medical and public health leaders in South Asia to consider and build on.View this table:In this windowIn a new windowTable 1 Key recommendations of a new ‘Stronger Together’ pandemic agenda for South AsiaThe uncontrolled spread of COVID-19 in many parts of South Asia implies that newer variants will continue to emerge. Some variants will inherently display increased transmissibility, infectivity and vaccine/antigenic escape capability, making it difficult for us to track and intelligently act on them.6 Rapidly scaling up capacity for genomics and rolling out … ER -