Background

The 10th International Conference 

on Public Health (10th ICPH)

 

Theme:

"Prevention and Preparedness of Future Global Health Crisis: 

Lessons Learned from COVID-19 Pandemic”.

 

 

Background:

COVID-19 is a disaster without recent parallels. The coronavirus pandemic has been the biggest disaster in living memory by almost any measure. Globally, in three years more than 6.8 million people have died from COVID-19 (Smith-Schoenwalder, 2023). Another article reported an estimate of more than 7.3 million people worldwide killed due to COVID-19, including more than one million people in the United States, 800,000 in Russia, 690,000 in Brazil, and 530,000 in India. As of March 9, 2023, Indonesia registered 160,941 deaths from the coronavirus. Those estimates are considered to be an undercount, with some reports estimating the true death toll is more than double the official count (Troeger, 2023; Statista, 2023).

 

Amidst the disastrous impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, international policy attention on global pandemic prevention, preparedness and response (PPR) has been laudable but inadequate. All countries remain dangerously unprepared for future outbreaks and other public health emergency. Some did not have a plan for a disease outbreak of this magnitude. Others had allowed key elements of their preparedness to fall back into previous patterns – for example, cutting spare bed capacity in hospitals in the name of efficiency, leaving healthcare systems unable to handle the sudden increase in COVID-19 patients. Crucially, many countries had not invested sufficiently in preparedness at the local level and were not able to leverage the local preparedness that did exist (IFRC, 2023; Stefan et al., 2023).

 

The countries most successful in fighting the spread of COVID-19 (e.g.  Indonesia) had built resilient healthcare systems and social safety nets, and they had learned the lessons of previous coronavirus outbreaks like severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in 2003. These countries still had to adapt and still found aspects of the pandemic difficult, but they had a cushion that others did not (IFRC, 2023).

 

The COVID-19 pandemic has taught countries and people worldwide valuable lessons, and it is important to review and assess actions that have been taken to determine what worked and what didn’t. Countries and societies need to be better prepared for future public health crises and this should be done through actions in different areas including investing in and strengthening the public health workforce, improving surveillance of infectious diseases, enhancing risk communication and community engagement, and embracing collaboration among organizations, countries, and regions (ECDC, 2023).

 

The InterAction Council, an international organization established in 1983 consisting of  a group of former world leaders, which aims to address long-term, global issues facing humankind, proposes eight key recommendations for future pandemic preparedness and emergency responses (Nurse, 2023):

 

  1. Build Back Green: Invest in solutions that address the climate crisis and enable progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals.
  2. Enable the Digital Transformation: Continue the rapid digital shift during the pandemic to create connected communities that can share learning, find solutions, and respond at scale to building back green.
  3. Courageous and Collaborative Leadership: For the wellbeing of future generations, to apply learning from the pandemic, re-scaling up emergency processes and unified efforts to address the climate and environmental crisis; empower young people with the skills and experience required to address emergencies and secure a healthy planet for all.
  4. Establish an Independent Global Emergency Mechanism: This mechanism is tasked with enhanced surveillance and monitoring, risk assessment and detection, with rapid alert and response systems. Such an organization needs to be able to establish a global and multi-sector response at speed and communicate freely, have independent governance, and be able to collaborate and mobilize action across the international community.
  5. Invest in Emergency Preparedness and Response: Invest sufficient budget for pandemic preparedness, including public health preventative measures and research.
  6. Strengthen Public Health and Health Protection: Invest in and enhance essential public health operations and services that are embedded within national health systems to enable national, regional, and local coordination and surge capacity during outbreaks.
  7. Enhance links with Multi-Sector Emergency Mechanisms: Ensure that health risks and pandemic preparedness planning are incorporated across global, national, regional, and local emergency planning systems and governance mechanisms.
  8. Increase Research into Prevention and Preparedness: Invest a sufficient budget for research into pandemic preparedness; investing in research on the effectiveness of preventative and health protection measures provides the most scope for reducing avoidable deaths, whilst maximizing economic savings, and reducing global security impacts.

Based on the above background, there is a need for conducting a conference where resource persons from across different disciplines present their various topics relevant to the theme and along with participants discuss and share views about the issues to better avert and prepare for the next global health threats.

Reference:

ECDC (2023). ECDC presents lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic. European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control. https://www.ecdc.­europa.­eu/en/­news-events/ecdc-presents-lessons-learned-covid-19-pandemic. Accessed on August 23, 2023.

 

IFRC (2023). Trust, equity, and local action. Lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic to avert the next global crisis. International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. https://www.ifrc.org/sites/default/files/2023-01/20230126­_WDR22_ExecutiveSummary.pdf. Accessed on August 23, 2023.

 

Nurse J (2020). The potential role of China in advancing the COVID-19 policy framework. https://www.interactioncouncil.org/media-centre/potential-role-china-advancing-covid-19-policy-framework. Accessed on August 24, 2023.

 

Smith-Schoenwalder C (2023). Three years of death – and finger-pointing. https://www.usnews.­com/­news/the-report/articles/2023-03-10/three-years-into-the-pandemic-who-is-dying-from-covid-19-now. Accessed on August 23, 2023.

 

Statista (2023). Total number of deaths from COVID-19 in Indonesia as of March 9, 2023(weekly update). https://www.statista.com/statistics/1103816/indonesia-covid-19-number-of-deaths/. Accessed on August 24, 2023.

 

Stefan C, Talbot T, Glassman A, Fan V, Hevey E, and Smitham E (2023). The next pandemic: if we can’t respond, we’re not prepared. https://reliefweb.int/report/­world/­­next-pandemic-if-we-cant-respond-were-not-prepared?gclid=­EAIaI­QobCh­MIrb2C1_HzgAMVBEYrCh1Pjgf3EAAYAyAAEgI9KvD_BwE. Accessed on August 24, 2023.