Moscow, Sep 23 (TIWN) Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday called for the removal of barriers to cooperation between countries in the field of medicine.

"As to healthcare, just like in economy, we now need to remove, as many as possible, obstacles to partner relations," Putin said at the general debate of the 75th session of the United Nations General Assembly, Xinhua news agency reported.  Russia has been actively contributing to global and regional efforts to counter Covid-19, providing assistance to most affected states both bilaterally and within multilateral formats, the president said, according to a Kremlin transcript of his speech. 

"In doing so, we first of all take into account the central coordinating role of the World Health Organization (WHO), which is part of the UN system. We believe it essential to qualitatively strengthen the capability of WHO," Putin said.