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ndonesia is aiming to strengthen bilateral cooperation on health issues as Health Minister Nila Moeloek meets her counterparts on the sidelines of the World Health Assembly (WHA) in Geneva, Switzerland.

The assembly is gathering delegates from the World Health Organization’s 194 member states to discuss ways to advance the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the 2030 Agenda, focusing on building better systems for health in a series of meetings from May 22 to 31.

Mila met with delegates from Saudi Arabia, Switzerland and Qatar and signed agreements with Timor Leste, Denmark and Cuba, the Indonesian Permanent Representative to the United Nations in Geneva said in a statement on Friday evening.

Indonesia and Timor Leste signed agreements on maternal and child health, infectious diseases and health services in border areas while those with Denmark covered public health promotion, information exchange in handling non-communicable diseases and capacity building.

With Cuba, Indonesia forged cooperation on vaccine production, bio-pharmaceutical research, bio-technology, nano-technology, primary health care and disease prevention and control, as well as capacity building.

Meanwhile, in a follow-up to the agreements signed with Saudi Arabia during King Salman bin Abdulaziz al-Saud’s visit to Indonesia in March, Nila also met with Saudi Health Minister Tawfiq bin Fawzan al-Rabiah. In the meeting Nila requested special attention on health services for Indonesians carrying out major and minor pilgrimages.

“This issue is very important for Indonesia, considering there are more than 200,000 Indonesian pilgrims and many of them are elderly,” Nila said in the statement.

In a meeting with Qatari Health Minister Hanan Mohamed al-Kuwari, Nila pushed for a government-level agreement to allow the sending of Indonesian nurses to Qatar.

During a meeting with her Swiss counterpart Alain Berset, Nila explored cooperation opportunities in handling infectious diseases and agreed to hold a technical-level meeting to study the possibility of cooperation in handling tropical diseases, such as malaria and leprosy.

Indonesian Ambassador to the UN in Geneva Hasan Kleib, who accompanied Nila in the meetings, underlined that strengthening bilateral health cooperation is a “must” because health has long been a cross-border issue.

“Indonesia can use this cooperation for capacity building and technology transfer in the field of public health. In addition, Indonesia can also help meet the needs of partner countries for health professionals, especially nurses,” he said.

At the annual assembly on Tuesday Nila had also stressed the importance of international cooperation in the handling of transnational pandemics.

“Cooperation will help Indonesia strengthen the national health system because many infectious diseases come from outside the country,” Nila told the assembly, as quoted in the statement.

She also said Indonesia was ready for the WHO Joint External Evaluation that would assess its health system in November.

The global assembly elected Ethiopian Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus to be the new WHO director general who will begin his five-year term on July 1.