3 Global Health policy questions on COVID19

"we are interested in global health policy for a reason, namely, to strengthen collective action to deal with global issues that pose a risk to human health"

During emergencies, the debate lets the floor to urgent actions. Nevertheless, the debate is a crucial driver for building the future.

With the evolving situation of the pandemic, we need to move to a new set of questions. 

In the old way of thinking we can find (still relevant) questions, like:

• How to foster adherence of the general population to sanitary measures?
• How to cope with the stress created by quarantine?
• How the pandemic will change the humanitarian aid (from donors’ priorities to delivery mechanisms)?

Among emerging (therefore still unsolved) key questions:

• Does pandemic experience change relationships between the Global North and the Global South?
• Is the evidence-base policy making under scrutiny or is it still a valid framework for decision-making in public health?
• Are we open to a serious discussion on the negative impacts of globalization on health? What we are really ready to change?

In a more pragmatic way:

• Who and how will evaluate the governments’ response? In other words: how much inclusive will be the production and validation of the lesson learned?
• Will national budgets be really re-allocated in favor of horizontal and diagonal public health approaches aimed to strengthen health systems and workforce?
• Which kind of innovative partnerships are needed for fundraising health? Will the economics be again on the top of international and national agendas?

Shifting the debate means to invite more disciplines to the roundtable.

We’re a bit sick to listen always to the same experts on the news – all of them with a similar background, mainstream discourse, and part of closed networks.

The next step implies to open the war room to critical voices, avoiding raising walls between rational people versus heretics. Future calls for wider participation in revising political priorities and ethical challenges.

Debate entails breaking taboos and reframing current narratives about the virus.