The COVID-19 pandemic has caused difficulties for many in accessing health care, such as restricted movements, reduced ability to pay and fear of infection, these have all posed additional and unprecedented challenges in many countries.
The World Health Organization (WHO) suggests that the world has not learned from previous epidemics.
Reacting to events as they occur, without adequately strengthening prevention and preparedness, meant that countries were caught unprepared for a pandemic of this speed and scale.
COVID-19 has hit vulnerable populations particularly hard and exacerbated pre-existing inequalities even further. This highlights the need for countries to take every opportunity to rebuild their health systems sustainably, more equitably and closer to communities.
“The pandemic has been a significant setback in our efforts to support Member States to progress towards universal health coverage,” said WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
“We cannot build a safer world from the top down; we must build from the ground up. Preparing for, preventing, detecting and responding rapidly to epidemics starts with strong primary health care and public health systems, skilled health workers, and communities empowered and enabled to take charge of their own health. That must be the focus of our attention, and our investment.”
WHO has released a position paper on building health systems resilience towards UHC and health security during COVID-19 and beyond to reinforce the urgent need for renewed and heightened national and global commitment to make countries better prepared and health systems resilient against all forms of public health threats for sustained progress towards both UHC and health security. This requires an integrated approach to building and rebuilding health systems that serve the needs of the population, before, during and after public health emergencies.
It encompasses capacities for:
These efforts will also help bolster the implementation of the International Health Regulations (2005) and accelerate the achievement of the health-related Sustainable Development Goals.
In summary, WHO’s seven policy recommendations on building resilient health systems based on primary health care are:
To access the whitepaper in full, click here.
