Madeline Vavricek, MJLST Staffer
The word “unprecedented” has been used repeatedly by every news organization and government official throughout the last several months. Though the times that we live in may be unprecedented, they are far from being statistically impossible—or even statistically unlikely. Based on the most recent implementation of the International Health Regulations released by the World Health Organization (WHO) in 2005, more than 70% of the world is deemed unprepared to prevent, detect, and respond to a public health emergency. The reality of this statistic was evidenced by the widespread crisis of COVID-19. As of September 29, 2020, the global COVID-19 death toll passed one million lives, with many regions still reporting surging numbers of new infections. Experts caution that the actual figure could be up to 10 times higher.
The impact of COVID-19 has made pandemic preparedness paramount in a way modern times have yet to experience. While individual countries look inward towards their own national response to the coronavirus, it is apparent now more than ever that global issues demand global solutions. The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic indicates a need for increased resiliency in public health systems to manage infectious diseases, a factor known as global health security.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) defines global health security as “the existence of strong and resilient public health systems that can prevent, detect, and respond to infectious disease threats, wherever they occur in the world.” Through global health security initiatives, organizations such as the Global Health Security Agenda focus on assisting individual countries in planning and resource utilization to address gaps in health security in order to benefit not only the health and welfare of the individual countries, but the health and welfare of the world’s population as a whole. The Coronavirus has been reported in 214 countries, illustrating that one country’s health security can impact the health security of dozens of others. With the ever-increasing spread of globalization, it is easier for infectious diseases to spread more than ever before, making global health security even more essential than in the past.
Global health security effects more than just health and pandemic preparedness worldwide. Johnson & Johnson Chief Executive Officer Alex Gorsky recently stated that “[g]oing forward, we’re going to understand much better that if we don’t have global public health security, we don’t have national security, we don’t have economic security and we will not have security of society.” As demonstrated by COVID-19, failure to adequately prevent, detect, and respond to infectious diseases has economic, financial, and societal impacts. Due to the Coronavirus, the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the Financial Times Stock Exchange Group saw their biggest quarterly drops in the first three months of the year since 1987; industries such as travel, oil, retail, and others have all taken a substantial hit in the wake of the pandemic. Unemployment rates have increased dramatically as employers are forced to lay off employees across the majority of industries, amounting in an estimated loss of 30 million positions in the United States alone. Furthermore, Coronavirus unemployment has been shown to disproportionally affect women workers and people of color. The social and societal effects of COVID-19 continue to emerge, including, but not limited to, the interruption of education for an estimated 87% of students worldwide and an increase in domestic violence rates during shelter in place procedures. The ripple effect caused by the spread of infectious disease permeates nearly every aspect of a nation’s operation and its people’s lives, well beyond that of health and physical well-being.
With a myriad of lessons to glean from the global experience of COVID-19, one lesson countries and their leaders must focus on is the future of global health security. The shared responsibility of global health security requires global participation to strengthen health both at home and abroad so that future infectious diseases do not have the devastating health, economic, and social consequences that the coronavirus continues to cause.