THE PANDEMIC’S WAKE-UP CALL

Covid-19 has the worst health crisis I have seen in my lifetime. I can’t think of any other comparable event that has had this kind of debilitating impact on people, not just across one country but around the world. The first lesson of the pandemic was the lack of preparedness of health systems in countries across the world, including the most high-income ones. The gap was mainly in the area of public health—detection, surveillance, prevention and response to infectious disease threats. Systems need to be in place, including trained manpower, real-time data collection and analysis, quality-assured laboratories, a risk communication strategy and empowered health authorities who could advise the administration on action needed. Paradoxically, we have observed that some low- and middle-income countries, which relied less on hi-tech and more on existing primary health and community-based approaches (like Rwanda, Senegal, Thailand and Vietnam) did relatively well.