International technical cooperation to low- and middle-income countries during the COVID-19 pandemic

This paper reports on the current status of international technical cooperation, reflecting the views of the Bureau of International Health Cooperation of the National Center for Global Health and Medicine (NCGM) during the COVID-19 pandemic. To appropriately respond to the pandemic, the need for assistance to low- and middle-income countries has increased. Since 2020, there has been a shift from on-site to online international technical cooperation to avoid human contact. While online solutions increased the number of participants in international conferences and training, business travel costs and time were reduced. However, it became necessary to consider not only effective labor-management practices to enable participation in meetings held in different time zones but also quicker ways to develop online training materials, which took a long time. In the future, a hybrid format combining offline and online international technical cooperation will become mainstream.