One issue that has emerged, but hasn’t received the attention it deserves during this pandemic period is public trust.
Governments and stakeholders in the health sector have had inadequate engagement with the public on improving their conditions during this pandemic. They have gained little trust to buy in public support.
This concern was raised in a panel discussion led by the Wall Street Journal on the multilateral approaches to improving population health, themed around United Nations General Assembly’s "Reaffirming our collective commitment to multilateralism" in the current global environment.
New Zealand has demonstrated that when a government builds public trust and rolls out policies, it’s able to effectively manage a crisis even at a critical time like a global pandemic.
The panelists agreed that the narrative provided at the start of the pandemic, which fashioned it as a trade-off between the economy versus the lockdown or the economy versus health, was counterproductive and misleading.
Locally, some of us tried to counter this misleading narrative but we were quickly shut down and prodded towards the narrative that the pandemic was a health problem.
The economy and public health have an interconnected and interdependent relationship and in a pandemic like the one we are in, the response is about putting the public health crisis at the centre so as to restore the economy.
New Zealand perfectly demonstrated this transparency as compared to other countries like the US. In short, better public health management during a pandemic leads to the effective restoration and recovery of the economy.
BIGGEST CHALLENGE
Though the biggest challenge the global pandemic has exposed is that the world today is unionised such that 'bad behaviour' coming from countries that fail to prioritise public health aggravates the crisis further.
For example, in the US we have seen a segment of the population heavily opposed to wearing of masks even after it has been established that masks help reduce the spread of the coronavirus, and populations within and outside US have started adopting the resistance, opposing wearing of masks, even though this is to protect your fellow citizens. Such human behaviour poses a critical challenge in the global fight against a pandemic.
The discussion also focused on the dilemma about measuring the recessionary effect of the pandemic today when we are still in the midst of the pandemic. Do we measure the public health impact, or do we measure the economic effects coming from the public health crisis?
This conversation is quite relatable in Kenya after easing public restrictions last week, and the question has been what the easing means for the economy: does it spell a rebound as many expect?
One of the panelists had an apt response, saying the global economy will still remain in recession until probably mid next year when the world has a vaccine produced for mass use.
This is because sectors that depend on mobility will still remain in a struggling position due to restrictions put in place.
For Kenya, the curfew time has only been shrunk but not lifted so there is still limitation on mobility between 11 p.m. and 4 a.m., which means minimal economic activity at that time.
SUPPLY CHAINS
On the international scene, countries will not be fully opening their economies so global supply chains will not be operating to their full potential.
The silver lining is that the pandemic has exposed countries’ healthcare preparedness and the need to address delivering better healthcare. An example is the digitalisation of health records that the public and private sector can pivot in collaboration during this time to deliver superior healthcare to the population.
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