"The most successful national responses to COVID-19 have been those which have engaged with local communities to build resilient health systems and inform service delivery, decision-making and governance to meet the needs of communities."
“We have been warned” preparing now to prevent the next pandemic | OPEN ACCESS
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‘COVID-19: Make it the Last Pandemic’ is the aspirational title of the recently released report by the Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response.[[1]] This panel, co-chaired by Helen Clark and Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, was convened in mid-2020 by the World Health Organization (WHO) to assess the global handling of COVID-19.
The report is predictably grim reading. The panel found weak links at every point in the chain of preparedness and response. Preparation was inconsistent and underfunded, alert systems were too slow and meek, WHO was under-powered, responses exacerbated inequities and global leadership was absent.
+Undoctored
University of Otago
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Learn lessons from our COVID-19 response, or our health system could suffer the consequences.
That’s the leading message from a group of five academics from the Universities of Otago, Canterbury and Massey, who say a failure to learn from this and previous outbreaks could result in a loss of time, knowledge and momentum for future crises.
Professor David Murdoch, the Dean of University of Otago in Christchurch, is the lead author on the editorial piece in the latest issue of the New Zealand Medical Journal this morning.
The paper reflects on the Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response’s report into COVID-19, and says that while our health system has coped well, there is still plenty to learn.