Covid-19 exposes sorry state of global healthcare systems

Past pandemic outbreaks are remembered for the ravages they caused to the healthcare systems of countries more than any positive clues they offer for the future.

For instance, the 2014 Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea is infamously remembered more for the ravages it caused to the healthcare systems of these countries than the critical lessons it offered for the future.

The same thing has happened again. The pandemic has tested the tenacity of many countries’ health systems beyond their limits, even those once considered trailblazers in global health. It has grossly exposed health inequalities that transcend global societies.

It has once again demonstrated that we should have prepared better for the crisis. Despite the grim picture, the pandemic should be a cause for optimism, in terms of the important lessons it offers for the future of the healthcare sector.

For instance, what areas of the healthcare systems should be targeted for reform? How should this be done? How can we avoid hospitals being overrun by the surge in demand forces?

Addressing these critical questions are key to ensuring the sustainability and resilience of health care systems, including Kenya’s moving forward.

The pandemic has shown that a functional healthcare sector is a key ingredient to keeping economies open. While economists argue that the cure cannot be worse than the problem, the pandemic has demonstrated that the economy is dependent on the healthcare sector.

The soaring numbers of Covid-19 deaths is a testament that there is a need for a long-term strategy to tackle health crises. This is of the essence as Kenya continues to lose her frontline professionals, some with rare medical training and expertise.

Long-term strategy

At the global level, there are several initiatives being spearheaded by developed countries to both respond to Covid-19, and augment the capacities of health services to be resilient in the face of future crises.

This is what, for instance, the Partnership for Health System Sustainability and Resilience (PHSSR), a joint collaboration between World Economic Forum (WEF) and AstraZeneca and some leading universities seek to achieve.

The dividends of this collaboration and many others will be felt for many years to come. In Africa, the absence of a coordinated effort that brings out synergies from different countries has left individual states to their devices.

Whilst WHO-Africa has been guiding the response approach, it is the individual governments that have borne the mission-critical responsibility of managing the fallout from the virus. This motivates the need to have a Kenyan-specific long-term strategy against such a pandemic, with an element of the vision for addressing future health crises.

In the immediate period, special attention should be directed towards mitigating the effects of Covid-19 as a stop-gap measure, given that the numbers will continue to rise. Africa is at the tail-end of the queue for a global vaccine distribution – meaning that the virus will, in the foreseeable future, continue to exact its toll on the continent.

Accordingly, the state’s UHC roll-out plans should be reset to first address the exigencies of Covid-19, even as it moves to fulfil the full essence of the programme of providing essential and quality health services to all.

Addressing the Covid-19 exigencies, which includes attending to the welfare of frontline healthcare workers, is key to boosting their morale – an essential ingredient for winning the war on the pandemic.