Global Health Monitor Says World Is Learning Nothing From The Pandemic
A year and a half after the coronavirus pandemic, the world has still done little to respond and has not learned from its mistakes, a global health observer said Tuesday.
In a report published in Berlin, the Global Preparedness Monitoring Board (GPMB), an independent body of the World Health Organization and the World Bank, denounced the continuing failure of the global response to the pandemic.
“While the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic was marked by a collective failure to take precautionary measures seriously and act quickly on the basis of science, the second year was marked by profound inequalities and leadership failures,” He says in the report.
The pandemic revealed an “unequal, divided and irresponsible world,” he concluded.
“The health emergency ecosystem reflects this broken world. It is not fit for purpose and needs a major overhaul.”
The report presented at the World Health Summit in Berlin comes from official sources, according to an AFP figure, as the death toll from the coronavirus is approaching five million.
Given the excess mortality that is, directly and indirectly, related to Covid-19, the WHO estimates that the total number of deaths could be two or three times higher.
The terrible milestone is approaching in the context of a sharp divide between the richest and poorest regions in vaccination rates.
The head of the World Trade Organization, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, noted earlier this month that of the more than six billion doses of vaccines worldwide, only 1.4% of people in poor countries are fully vaccinated.
“Scientific advancements during Covid-19, especially the speed of vaccine development, make us proud,” said Elhadj As Sy, co-chair of GPMB, in his foreword to the report.
“However, we are deeply ashamed of the many tragedies: vaccine hoarding, devastating oxygen shortages in low-income countries, the generation of children without education, the collapse of economies, and the fragile healthcare system.”
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He also said that the millions of deaths from the pandemic “were not normal or acceptable.”
“Unfortunately, there is little evidence that we are drawing the right lessons from this pandemic. Thousands of people continue to die every day, but many speak up and pretend that the pandemic is over,” he said.
In a 2020 report, the GPMB said that the pandemic had already shown how little the world had focused on preparing for such disasters, despite numerous warnings that major epidemics were inevitable.
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