A Marxist politician, as it happens, shows the way
James Fox, actor, 81; Robert Kilroy-Silk, former politician and TV host, 78; Pete Townshend (pictured), guitarist and singer (The Who), 75; Grace Jones (pictured), model, singer and actress, 72; Jodi Picoult, author, 54; Amanda de Cadenet, actress and photographer, 48; Sam Smith, singer, 28.
IT is now widely acknowledged Britain is the sick man of Europe.
Before the current crisis the UK languished at the bottom of all European health tables. While Germany is top of the list for the provision of critical care beds, for example, the UK is 24th out of 31. Germany has four times as many ICU beds than the UK. From the very beginning of the Covid-19 crisis, the Merkel government acted decisively with testing and rigorous contact tracing. This enabled the disease to be relatively contained and the deaths of those over 60 amounted to only 20% of the total. In the UK it is 92%. The case fatality rate here is 4.8% whereas in Germany it is 0.6%.
No surprises there, perhaps. But has anyone noticed what has been going on in the Indian state of Kerala? The state has a population of 35 million (66 million here). Kerala has a GDP per head of £2,200 (£40,400 here). A poor country, then? Kerala’s number of Covid-19 cases has been 519 with just four deaths. That’s right, four deaths. Incoming air passengers were tested and suspected cases isolated.
With health centres in every village they have rigorously conducted testing and tracing and stopped community transmission. Covid-19 was contained.
Sure, things may get worse as migrant labourers return from elsewhere in India but they have the structures in place to face the problem.
How has this been possible? A health minister – KK Shailaja – who on reading about the first cases in China asked medical experts if there was a threat. Then she acted on the warning.
None of this happened just because the minister, like Angela Merkel had a science training. Their politics could not be more different – the Indian is a Marxist, Merkel a Christian Democrat. I would suggest it happened because both had the welfare of the people at the front of their actions. Neither was worried about popularity or obsessed with an ideological issue – like Johnson’s one-track Brexit thinking. Most of all, it was possible because they had invested in their health services at ground level.