Covid raises bar for infectious disease crisis response
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The pandemic has caused extraordinary economic and social disruption globally, closing schools and offices, sealing borders and limiting social contact. Governments with squeezed budgets have struggled to cope with the hardship and inequality that Covid-19 has exposed — and worsened.
Hans Kluge, European regional director of the WHO, who this month released findings of a Pan-European Commission on Health & Sustainable Development to learn the lessons of Covid-19, says: “We have all been taken by surprise. Health systems that we deemed very strong were overwhelmed. It is time to rethink preparedness.”
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Minimising the effect of the pandemic — and mitigating the impact of future outbreaks — pushes public health specialists including Martin McKee from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine to call for greater investment in supporting healthier lifestyles, such as efforts to curb tobacco use and poor-quality diets.
He argues for the need to tackle underlying structural “social determinants of health”, which contribute to many diseases. These include addressing inequality and strengthening the resilience and inclusiveness of health systems, to redress imbalances.
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