KATHMANDU: A webinar of the South Asian affiliates of IPPNW was held on recently on Combating Triple Threat – COVID 19, Climate Change and Arms Race.
In the webinar attended by representatives of IPPNW affiliates from Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and India, speakers gave their view points on the situation of COVID in their respective countries.
There was a general consensus that the governments were late in responding to the crisis, a statement issued by the IPPNW said.
Therefore barring Sri Lanka all the countries have high number of cases, it was said.
Fortunately the mortality rate in all the South Asian countries is not too high for the reasons unknown till date.
Whereas initially the disease spread more among the affluent section of the society but gradually the lower income group too have been affected.
They said that poor public health system in the countries of South Asia became a cause for spread of the disease to this extent.
Several of the experts also said that delayed response to the crisis led to inadequacy in the preparation to face the disease in this specific situation when “we do not have sufficient knowledge” about the spread and effects of virus.
Due to restricted activities as a result of lockdown the economic crisis that ensued affected the marginalized sections of the society very gravely, they said.
This has led to serious issues of hunger and nutrition deficiency among the low income groups, according to them.
This is bound to have a long lasting impact on the health of the children in particular.
Unfortunately there was poor support by the governments in most of the places. Mental health issues which became grave in such situation have been broadly ignored by the governments.
The meeting decried violation of human rights by the governments in different places who tackled the pandemic like a law and order problem.
The situation got chaotic as the politicians took over and public health principles were ignored.
According to the participants, professionals should be allowed to handle the medical issues and ensure care and safety of corona warriors.
The meeting opined that public health issues are common in the South Asian countries and stressed the need for respective governments to join hands together and with civil society.
There was satisfaction at that there is global effort being made to produce the vaccine, but there is skepticism that the vaccines will be used for making profits by the companies because of which these will be out of reach of the poor sections, they opined.
According to them, forums like SAARC should come forward to make such cooperation happen.
Therefore it is imperative that the South Asian countries should shun the arm race and spend money on tackling the COVID, producing vaccine and on health in the long run.
It was decided to write a joint letter to all the heads of states demanding the following: South Asian countries should increase the public health spending to a minimum of 5% of the GDP.
The South Asian countries as members of the SAARC should increase their cooperation in fighting such pandemics as well as other health related issues in region.
Bjorn Hilt, Chairman of the IPPNW Board gave an account of the situation of COVID – 19 in Nordic countries in particular and Europe in general.
Comment