It had just begun this month when the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) published an interesting text: «Preparing for the next pandemic».
After everything that humanity has gone through, and continues to go through, since two years ago, on March 11, this horrible pandemic was declared, it is frankly unpleasant to face titles like the one in the aforementioned document.
You feel like just crossing your fingers to “scare away” the bad omen, and, immediately afterwards, turn the page.
But that would be doing like the ostrich: putting your head in a hole to pretend to ignore what is happening.
Photo: EFE
And anyway, reality is going to keep screaming out and, definitely, imposing itself, despite everything. Therefore, it would be valuable for each and every one of the inhabitants of this planet to dwell on the alerts issued by the UNDP when it recounts what we have learned in these two sinister years.
In addition to acknowledging that the world was not prepared for an event like this, they warn that, at present, countries continue to be “dangerously unprepared” for a similar future event.
For such an affirmation, they cite the report 2021 Global Health Security Indexwhich indicates this, even acknowledging progress.
Inequalities were one of the worst breeding grounds for the pandemic to take over our existence, not only exposing them all with their darkest overtones, but deepening them because, as the quoted text says, “those who were already staying behind are the who have suffered the most…”
And one of the edges in which inequalities have become most evident has been precisely the distribution of vaccines. Such has been the lack of equality, that in low-income countries only 13.3% of the population has been vaccinated; while in high-income nations, that indicator reaches 68.6%.
Photo: EFE
The lack of universal health coverage has been evidenced in the responses to this pandemic, which has also set back progress made in tackling diseases such as HIV, malaria and tuberculosis.
Aid to the countries furthest behind in vaccination and in their recovery from this global health crisis may contribute to the foundations of a more equitable world, but achieving it does not depend, of course, only on it.
“Leadership and competition have mattered more than money in responses to the pandemic. There is a clear opportunity to build a future beyond the pandemic based on sources of wisdom from all over the world,” UNDP stresses.
This United Nations program recalls that “the cost of an effective and fair response to a pandemic is only a fraction of what a poor response costs us,” and they estimate that COVID-19 will cost the world economy 500 times more than some effective pandemic prevention measures.
Photo: taken from listindiario.com
Undoubtedly, we live in a decisive moment for the future of our species, because what we achieve as a civilization from this moment could mark the course in the face of future catastrophes such as the one experienced; above all, if it does not remain idly in the face of so much inequality on the rise.
What we do now could make this pandemic the last of its kind. But is the world willing to do what it takes?
