Ivana haluskova balter
Epidemic/pandemics affect us all. This teach us about essential importance of health, access to health as essential human right and sustainable healthcare infrastructures as prerequisite of any economic progress and rethink better model to face them. It remains us also fragilized environment, links with animal health and interlinks between long term lasting climate changes with its consequences to health directly but also indirectly to all economies and societal impact.
The policies needed to ensure that future vaccines for SARS-Cov-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, and treatments but also for any upcoming pandemic and list of diseases can be made widely available.
We need to look into vaccine and drug candidates in the current R&D pipeline and there is more than ever a need for international co-operation to focus on key issues like incentivising R&D, building large-scale manufacturing capacity and managing intellectual property rights.
The costs of EIDs (emerging infectious diseases) are vast, in both human and economic terms. As well as the devastating death toll and disruption to societies, COVID-19 could cost the global economy $4.1 trillion, or almost 5% of global gross domestic product. Even small epidemics can cause tremendous economic disruption and heavy societal consequences.
Vaccines are one of our most powerful tools in the fight to outsmart epidemics. The development of vaccines can help save lives, protect societies, and restabilise economies but there is a need to increase awareness and provide tangible examples from past (ex. Polio, BCG, Rotavirus vaccine ) and explanation not only dedicated to healthcare personnel.