By Kemo Cham
Post-pandemic health systems must be built back better, with a strong social protection net for all and improved healthcare for women, children and young people that takes full account of their self-articulated needs, participants attending a summit on Covid-19 have urged.
The summit held on the theme: ‘Lives in the Balance: A COVID-19 Summit,’ urged global leaders to commit to a seven-point policy plan for improving and increasing investment in health systems and social protection policies for women, children and adolescents as the world rebuilds in the wake of the pandemic.
About 1,500 delegates from 110 countries registered to attend the major interactive virtual summit, pooling knowledge and experience with the goal of examining the impact and consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic on sexual, reproductive, maternal, child and adolescent health and rights. The meeting was also intended to consider how global health systems can be built back post-pandemic with more robust protections and improved services for women, children and young people that take full account of their self-articulated needs.
The two days summit, which lasted from 1 to 2 July, was jointly hosted by the Partnership for Maternal, Newborn & Child Health (PMNCH) and CORE Group.
The World Health Organization’s Director-General, Tedros Ghebreyesus, presided over the opening of the summit, and in a statement, he called on campaigners to join in the “urgent, rallying call to leave no women, children or adolescents behind in our response to this pandemic.”
He added: “On behalf of WHO, I stand behind all partners - civil society, health professionals, the private sector, young people and more - in advancing the PMNCH Call to Action on COVID-19.”
The organizers of the summit said in a statement that while young and adult women, children and adolescents are statistically less prone to die from COVID-19, the virus, and the measures taken to control it, can compound and exacerbate the many social and health inequalities they face in their daily lives.
They cited a research from the medical journal, The Lancet, which projected that disruptions in access to services in low- to middle-income countries could lead to more than one million child deaths and almost 57,000 maternal deaths over the next six months, while the WHO estimates that approximately 80 million babies are now at risk of missing routine immunizations.
Delegates at the summit stressed the need for urgent action to mitigate the devastating effects of the pandemic on the health and wellbeing of the vulnerable members of the world’s population.
“This pandemic is a watershed moment for humanity,” said Helen Clark, Chair of PMNCH and former Prime Minister of New Zealand.
“It can be the moment when we tackle, once and for all, the unacceptable inequities that divide our societies, the moment we commit to having resilient health systems that provide accessible, high quality care for all, and the moment when we acknowledge the need for truly inclusive policy dialogue and decision making. To seize that moment, we must begin by listening to women, children and adolescents and all whose voices often go unheard,” she added.
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