Turkmenistan was one of the first in the world to register the Russian vaccines “Sputnik V” and “Epivakkorona” and vaccinate the population with them, thanks to which the country managed to avoid a pandemic. President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov said this during an informal meeting of the heads of the CIS member states in St. Petersburg on Tuesday.

The Turkmen leader thanked his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin for his help in this area, noting that the Sputnik Light consignment arrived in Turkmenistan the day before, being used as a booster dose of vaccinations against COVID-19.

Since the fight against the pandemic was among the main topics of discussion of the leaders of the CIS countries, the Russian president invited the chief sanitary doctor of the Russian Federation Anna Popova to speak at the summit and talk about further work to combat the coronavirus.

She stressed that against the backdrop of the pandemic, there is an increase in investments in the creation of laboratories of a high level of biological protection in many countries of the world. Obviously, research in the field of molecular epidemiology and biological safety requires investments, personnel and infrastructure, scientific centers and laboratories.

In this context, the proposals of the President of Turkmenistan, voiced at the informal CIS summit, on the development of scientific ties in the field of medicine, are relevant.

So, touching upon the topic of biological safety, Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov proposed to revise and re-adopt a single document in this area, noting that Turkmenistan and the Russian Federation have already signed such a document bilaterally.

The Turkmen leader proposed to highlight its geographical distribution as a separate area of study of the genome of the new coronavirus, in particular, in the arid zone, which includes the countries of Central Asia.

Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov also spoke in favor of developing common approaches in the field of bacteriology and virology, stressing the importance of methodological support from Russia in this matter.

ORIENT news