In connection with the ongoing pandemic of a new type of coronavirus and by the international community for comprehensive measures to counter this global threat, the Ministry of foreign Affairs of Turkmenistan issued a press release which reads:

"From the first days of distribution in the world COVID-19, in Turkmenistan on the base of system was organized to prevent skidding of the infection to the territory of the country.

In this context, a Government Commission was established under the leadership of the President of Turkmenistan, whose competence includes solving organizational, legal, financial, technical and other issues related to countering coronavirus. To coordinate the activities of the relevant state bodies, an Operational headquarters was established, which included representatives of the ministries of health and medical industry, foreign Affairs, internal Affairs, state border, customs, migration services, and other departments.

At the first stage of the fight against coronavirus infection, a number of measures were taken to strengthen border, customs, migration regimes, sanitary-epidemiological and phyto sanitary control, and veterinary supervision.

There is also a system of regular provision of the population on a free basis with basic medicines that help to strengthen human immunity.

The country is implementing a program of General medical examination of the population, and necessary measures are being taken to improve the immune status of people.

At the same time, Turkmenistan is developing international cooperation aimed at consolidating the efforts of the world community to combat the pandemic threat.

The active participation of the President of Turkmenistan in international Summits held to combat the pandemic is particularly noteworthy.

In particular, the President of Turkmenistan in May 2020 made an initiative to promote scientific diplomacy at the summit of the non-Aligned Movement, suggesting the creation of an international Council of medical scientists.

The main content of this initiative is to establish direct contacts between practitioners and scholars in the field of medical science in the following areas:

first, offered to cooperate actively in determining the nature of the new coronavirus;

secondly, it is considered expedient to intensify the work of the scientific medical community in the field of study of the manifestations of diseases caused by infection of a new type;

third, we emphasize the need to work together to find forms, methods and means of treating particularly dangerous infectious diseases and their prevention, including the development of vaccines, other special medical products, and much more.

One of the most significant examples of Turkmenistan's contribution to international efforts to combat the spread of COVID-19 infection is the information on the set of measures taken by our country, which is set out in the written message of the President of Turkmenistan to the Director General of the world Health Organization. This letter was distributed as an official document of the 74th session of the United Nations General Assembly.

At the same time, on May 28, 2020, an international forum on sustainable development was held on the initiative of Turkmenistan. The final document of the Forum, which also included provisions on addressing the problems associated with the pandemic, was also published as an official document of the 74th session of the UN General Assembly.

In the context of the above facts, we should emphasize the call of the UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to the member States of the Organization on March 30, 2020 to organize comprehensive and systematic work to counter the coronavirus threat.

In this regard, on May 22 of this year, Turkmenistan adopted a national Plan for ensuring preparedness to counteract and respond to acute infectious diseases at the state level.

At the same time, on July 3 of this year, a Plan for operational socio-economic measures in Turkmenistan to counteract the coronavirus pandemic was approved.

Turkmenistan is currently working with United Nations agencies to develop a third national plan that covers the humanitarian component of the country's response to COVID-19 infection.

The problems of the pandemic are now the subject of professional research, research and development. This work involves scientists from many countries who, based on deep scientific analysis, are already reaching serious results that are of great practical significance in the fight against the pandemic.

One of these events was the appeal of 239 scientists from 32 countries published on July 4 this year with an open letter to the Director General of the world Health Organization, which contains information about the results of scientific research confirming the possibility of spreading a new type of coronavirus through the smallest aerosol drops that are kept in the air for a long time.

The Turkmen side, based on the research of the medical scientific community of Turkmenistan, supports the above-mentioned scientific results.

In this regard, it should be noted that many years of research by Turkmen doctors, ecologists, specialists in Hydrometeorology and other fields of science confirm that substances dangerous to human health, including viruses, can be carried by air currents in the sensitive environmental environment of Central Asia.

In this case, air masses formed in the zone of ecological disaster caused by the drying up of the Aral Sea are particularly dangerous, which have an extremely negative impact on the nature, climate, and health of people living in the Aral Sea region and far beyond its borders. Dust and salt storms that carry particularly harmful substances from the bottom of the dried-up Aral Sea spread for thousands of kilometers and pose a real danger to human life.

Today, Turkmenistan's position on the Aral problem is well-known in the world. On June 22, 2012, the President of Turkmenistan, speaking at the Rio+20 sustainable development Summit, stressed that the problem of the Aral Sea has now "gone far beyond the region and has become truly global".

Therefore, it was proposed to create a Special UN program for the Aral Sea basin.

In order to implement this proposal in practice, the international community, represented by the UN, on the initiative of Turkmenistan, adopted two General Assembly resolutions on cooperation between the United Nations and the International Fund for saving the Aral Sea (IFAS) on April 12, 2018 and May 28, 2019, which created the basis for multilateral cooperation to solve the problems of the Aral Sea at the UN site.

Developing multilateral cooperation in the Aral Sea area, the draft concept of the UN Special program for the Aral Sea basin was presented at the Sixth session of the Committee on disaster risk reduction of the UN Economic and social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) in August 2019. As a result of the review of this document, a draft ESCAP resolution on further work on this Special program has been prepared, which is scheduled for consideration at the regular session of the Commission in May 2021.

Much attention is paid to solving the problems of the Aral Sea in the project of the Regional Program for the protection of the environment of Central Asia for sustainable development, developed within the framework of Turkmenistan's chairmanship in the international Fund for saving the Aral Sea in 2017-2019 and approved by the decision of the Interstate Commission on sustainable development of IFAS in October 2019 in Nukus, Republic of Uzbekistan.

Based on the above, the Ministry of foreign Affairs of Turkmenistan emphasizes the readiness of the Turkmen side to continue broad multilateral cooperation at the international and regional levels to combat the pandemic, including in matters of detailed study of the impact of exogenous (natural) factors on the spread of COVID-19 coronavirus.

To this end, Turkmenistan will soon take a number of further practical steps within the framework of implementing agreements reached with international partners aimed at strengthening solidarity in the fight against a new type of infection," the press service of the Turkmen foreign Ministry informs.