https://www.oxfam.org/en/research/how-confront-coronavirus-catastrophe
Oxfam is calling for immediate action to shore up public health systems now and for the long-term, making them fair and accessible to all and saving millions of lives:
- Prevention. Huge investments must be made in public health promotion and communication, community engagement and education, access to water and sanitation, and free testing for all.
- Ten million new paid and protected health workers should be recruited to help slow the spread of this virus and to be there to treat and care for those affected.
- Free healthcare. Governments must remove all financial barriers to people accessing healthcare and deliver free testing and treatment to all who need it.
- Private must work for public. Governments must find means to utilize all private healthcare facilities to increase capacity to treat and care for infected patients and to meet ongoing essential health needs.
- Vaccine and treatment for all. Global agreement that new vaccines and treatments will be a global public good, available to all who need it for free. Rich countries should provide enough funding to make it available rapidly to everyone.
From the report:
‘What this pandemic is already revealing is that free health care without conditions of income, career or profession, our welfare state are not costs or burdens but precious goods, essential assets when fate strikes. What this pandemic reveals is that there are goods and services that must be placed outside the laws of the market.’ President Emmanuel Macron1
‘Coronavirus anywhere is a threat to people everywhere’ Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, former Liberian President
This virus is impacting everyone across the globe. People are living in fear for their own health and for that of their loved ones. The virus preys most on the vulnerable and people in poverty, at home and around our world. The Coronavirus threatens to take many millions of lives and push billions more into poverty.
The virus exposes the extreme inequalities that define our world. We cannot let it exploit the huge gap between the richest and rest of society. Between the rich world and the poor world. Between women and men. If we allow this to happen then millions of the poorest will die, and millions more will face terrible economic hardship.
Humanity is under attack, and we must respond as one. So far, the epicentre of the virus has been in powerful economies. Despite their deep pockets, they are facing huge challenges and heartbreak. Yet the virus is catching up fast in developing countries. With chronically weak health systems and hundreds of millions living in closely packed slums and refugee camps with minimal access to soap or water, containing the spread of the disease is an unprecedented public health challenge. If we don’t take more urgent preventative measures now and on an unprecedented scale, on some estimates as many as 40 million people could die.2 This could easily become the biggest humanitarian crisis the world has seen since World War Two.
We have a small window of opportunity to implement prevention measures in poor countries to delay the further spread of the virus. If we act now with basic measures – handwashing, clean water, sharing practical information in the right language which enables people to protect themselves against the virus, engaging with communities to trust in response efforts; alongside widescale testing, contact tracing and isolation for those infected – we can stop or delay the spread. Action now can avert the nightmare of the virus spreading in refugee camps, in slums, in conflict areas – but we must act urgently.
2
It is understandable that national leaders are focused on tackling this crisis in their own countries, but leaders, and especially the G20, must find the space for supporting other nations too, if humanity is to successfully beat this disease. They must commit to an urgent and unprecedented humanitarian response across the globe. This week the United Nations launched a 2-billion-dollar Global Humanitarian Response Plan, but this is just the tip of the iceberg. We need rich nations to fund this urgently, and to add additional funds to support NGOs, local organizations and governments in poor countries to put in place prevention measures and prepare to respond.
Oxfam is proposing two things that the G20 and other leaders can do simultaneously. The first is to develop a Global Public Health Plan and Emergency Response to tackle the disease head on – preventing and delaying its spread, saving lives now and into the future. The second is to create an economic rescue plan to pay for the huge increase in public health and to help ordinary people cope with the huge economic costs precipitated by this virus. This first media brief focuses on the Global Public Health Plan and Emergency Response.
A GLOBAL PUBLIC HEALTH PLAN AND EMERGENCY RESPONSE
The Coronavirus is overwhelming some of the best healthcare systems in the world. But it remains the case that strong public healthcare systems, where access to quality prevention, treatment and care is not based on ability to pay but is available to all, remain in the best place to weather the viral storm. Private healthcare is deeply compromised in the face of the pandemic. Countries with fragmented, privatized healthcare systems, from the United States to Kenya, are simply not up to the challenge. They not only mean that the poorest people are vulnerable, they put the whole population at risk. When a virus affects the whole world, buying yourself out is not an option.
According to the WHO, at least half the world’s 7.6 billion people cannot access the essential healthcare they need even in normal times.3 In developing countries, the disease burden is already far higher than in rich nations.
Each day nearly 4,000 people die from tuberculosis;4 a further 1,500 are killed by malaria, most of them children.5 These numbers are at risk of rising dramatically as the pandemic competes for stretched healthcare resources. Across low-income countries, the average health spending was only US$41 per person in 2017, compared with US$2,937 in high-income countries – more than 70 times greater.6 Weak, underfunded and unequal health systems in developing countries are already completely unable to cope.
A coordinated and massive investment in public health is desperately needed now if we are to stop the spread of this deadly virus and prevent millions of deaths.
Each and every government must act urgently and decisively to reorient their economies to put the health and wellbeing of their people first. They must step up to the challenge and they must step up together. In every country affected by this pandemic people are already demonstrating their enormous capacity to support one another and act in solidarity. This solidarity must be echoed and amplified at international level so that every country, rich and poor, has the resources needed to respond. Enlightened multilateralism, long sacrificed to narrow nationalism, must be put back at centre stage to build an emergency and long-term health response unseen in our history. The WHO should work with the G20 and other national governments to rapidly agree and fund a Global Public Health Plan and Emergency Response.
It would cost approximately $159bn to double the public health spending of all of world’s 85 poorest countries.7 These countries are home to 3.7 billion people.8 This is less than 8% of the latest US fiscal stimulus alone.
Rich countries can help developing countries in two key ways: by giving them aid and by reducing their existing costs and debts. A key start will be immediately to fully fund the $2bn UN Humanitarian Response Plan, and plan for a massive scaling up of global humanitarian efforts as the virus starts to impact the poorest countries. This must include steps to provide clean water, public health education, and cash grants. Much of this funding needs to go directly to local NGOs, and special care must be taken to address the gendered impacts this crisis will have. Donors and multilateral institutions should also rapidly scale up other aid, building on initial moves from the World Bank, IMF and others, and especially provide support to developing country health budgets.
Second, the G20 and all bilateral and multilateral donors need to agree to an immediate moratorium on debt interest payments for poor country governments without conditions.9 This has already been called for by the World Bank and the IMF in an unprecedented move.10 In Africa alone, this act would free up an estimated $44bn this year to help finance their public health response.
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