Massive global failure’ led to COVID-19 deaths, reversal ...

“The interconnected sectors of health, education, and employment have experienced great setbacks [due to COVID-19] in most nations and more severely in [low-income countries] and LMICs, slowing, halting, or pushing back the progress in SDGs 3 [good health and well-being], 4 [quality education], and 8 [decent work and economic growth],” he said.

On SDG financing, the Lancet Commission recommended increasing the cash available to countries. Sachs said he was “part of a UN process recommending an ‘SDG stimulus’ of around $500 billion per year for developing countries”.

The Commission makes a number of other recommendations including that all the countries around the world should take up a “vaccination-plus strategy” – where widespread vaccination is combined with public health precautions and financial measures.

It also calls for strengthening of the WHO as well as expansion of its Science Council.

Thekkekara Jacob John, former professor of clinical virology at the Christian Medical College in Vellore, India, told SciDev.Net: “In my opinion, WHO has failed to work with low- and middle-income countries to make their health management systems robust enough to face regular or ‘mundane’ health problems.”

This piece was produced by SciDev.Net’s Global desk and is republished under a Creative Commons Licence. You can read the original here: https://bit.ly/3C4iYib