Low healthcare budgets weaken global fight against COVID-19: WHO official

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Low, healthcare, budgets, weaken, global fight, against, COVID-19, WHO, official
A doctor in a protective suit checks with patients at a temporary hospital at Tazihu gymnasium in Wuhan in central China's Hubei province. -AP

Dubai - Only after the outbreak of coronavirus have countries invested in their preparedness to confront such epidemics.

By Wam

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Published: Tue 3 Mar 2020, 5:00 PM

Last updated: Tue 3 Mar 2020, 7:58 PM

Countries with lower spending on healthcare are likely to undermine the global fight against the new coronavirus, COVID-19, warned a World Health Organisation senior official.
Dr. Richard Brennan, Acting Regional Emergency Director at the WHO regional office for the Eastern Mediterranean, said that insufficient investments to prevent the further spread of coronavirus had hampered world efforts to deal with the epidemic.
"Some individual countries were ready, but the world was not ready [to face this outbreak]. The international community as a whole have not invested in preparedness," Dr. Brennan told the Emirates News Agency, WAM.
Only after the outbreak of coronavirus have countries invested in their preparedness to confront such epidemics, he pointed out.
The UN healthy agency previously recommended that countries should work on trying to reduce the risk of imported cases of COVID-19, as well as reduce the risk of spread from cases that get into their borders; therefore increasing the chance that people who get sick survive the infection.
The WHO official told WAM that there are many countries in the world whose investments in healthcare are not up to the required level. "We would like to see up to 15 per cent of the total [national] budget going to the healthcare sector. However, there are countries that spend less than five percent on healthcare systems," he explained.
"We have seen [the impact of] Ebola; now we have coronavirus; this is a wakeup call. We have not seen countries following the lessons [learned] earlier," Dr. Brennan said.
"What we need is cultural preparedness on an in-country level and within the international community," he stressed. "We do have to take this [epidemic] much more seriously. We are seeing not only the impact on public health but also a broad economic and social impact. So investment in preparedness is vital."
Middle Eastern countries such as the UAE and Saudi Arabia have more substantial capacities to tackle the situation, Dr. Brennan noted.
However, he added, there is a bigger concern for some MENA countries with weaker healthcare systems, particularly conflict-ridden nations such as Yemen, Syria and Somalia.
"We are very concerned that if coronavirus hits those countries, we may see an acceleration [in the number] of cases," Dr. Brennan said, adding that the WHO is focusing on supporting vulnerable countries with other partners.
"We have the right tools to stop [the spread of] this virus. But we have to scale up our efforts," he concluded.
The latest WHO figures estimate nearly 90,000 coronavirus cases globally so far, with around 3,000 fatalities.


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