Jack Ma, co-founder and former executive chairman of China's e-commerce giant Alibaba Group, has called for unity and cooperation at an online anti-epidemic meeting held on the Global MediXchange for Combating COVID-19 (GMCC) platform on April 28.

During the meeting, Wang Chen, a Chinese expert in respiratory diseases and critical care medicine, and eight medical specialists from the China-Japan Friendship Hospital in Beijing shared their anti-pandemic experience with over 1,600 medical workers and experts from the Africa Centers of Disease Control and Prevention and 22 African countries.

The GMCC platform, jointly established by the Jack Ma Foundation and Alibaba Foundation, has already held five China-Africa anti-pandemic meetings, bringing together over 1,500 medical experts from China and Africa, Ma said in his speech at the meeting.

Ma also expressed confidence in Africa’s fight against the epidemic. "Medical supplies and technologies are important, but they aren't as important as cooperation," he said, adding that he believes the fact that African countries can sit together and share their experience is the best way to combat the virus.

"I'm sure that we have many possible ways to deal with the existing threats facing all mankind such as disease, poverty and environmental pollution," Ma noted, pointing out that the knowledge, information technology and anti-risk capabilities of the world nowadays are extremely powerful.

The difference, however, lies in whether these means are employed to create differences and divisions or to strengthen cooperation and collaboration, he said, underlining that only unity, cooperation and confidence can beat the epidemic.