“A pandemic is so much more than a health crisis,” writes DrTedros. “That means governments must not see health as a cost, but as an investment in social, economic and political stability and security”
month I declared an end to covid-19 as a global health emergency; a bookend to the most severe global health crisis since the influenza pandemic in 1918.
Covid-19 has also exposed and exacerbated political fault lines, within and between nations. Vaccines, masks, “lockdowns” and other public-health measures have been heavily politicised. Some leaders have lost their jobs as a result of their handling of the pandemic. The quest to identify the origins of the pandemic has increased geopolitical tensions globally.
The answer is complex, but one reason is that many high-income countries were lulled into a false sense of security by their advanced medical systems, and caught out by their historic under-investment in public health. For decades, the world’s wealthiest countries have invested heavily in specialised and sophisticated hospitals, medical equipment and medicines.
The lesson is that while advanced medical care is vital for protecting the health of individuals, protecting the health of populations takes a different focus, and a different kind of investment: in disease surveillance, laboratory capacity and especially primary health care. As the eyes and ears of the health system, strong primary health care has a vital dual function, in helping to protect communities against both pandemics and “everyday” health threats.
As public goods, investments in public health and primary health care are also investments in addressing the inequities within and between nations that covid-19 exposed so brutally. Lower-income countries and communities had less access to vaccines, therapeutics and other tools; at the same time, those communities were often more at risk as a result of having higher rates of smoking, obesity and other risk factors than more privileged groups.
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