COVID-19 Disturbs Progress in Global Health and Demands Global Collaboration
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation strives to create a better world by using the power of philanthropy to achieve global health. The Foundation is credited with being ahead of the curve on both strategic and tactical ways to implement health systems and in dealing with worldwide disease and pandemics.
It is instructive to hear what the Gates Foundation has to say about the impact of COVID-19 is having right now as well as the worldwide threat it poses, moving forward. We must understand the extent of the pandemic’s damage to the progress made in providing health solutions to worldwide diseases and economies, both local and global.
Moreover, the Foundation urges that the problems posed by COVID-19 demand a collaborative process to get back to equilibrium and that everyone must row in the same direction.
https://www.gatesfoundation.org/goalkeepers/
Gates Foundation + 193 World Leaders = Real Results
The breadth of the Foundation’s goals is massive in scope. Since 2015, the Gates Foundation has been working in conjunction with 193 world leaders to achieve the United Nations’ 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) listed below and has quantified progress on them.
Since 2015, the Foundation and its partners have tackled these 17 issues, one at a time. In 2020, for instance, the focused initiative was to Improve Clean Water and Sanitation. And the work has taken them to Kenya where a task force was assembled to successfully provide safe sanitation for a more healthy and sustainable environment.
Case Study: How COVID-19 Disrupts Progress Made in Fighting Malaria
The notion that COVID-19 will spare young children is challenged by how the pandemic is disrupting progress made in fighting malaria. Going back to 2009, the number of deaths due to malaria is down 60% in Sub-Sahara Africa. This is due to two relatively simple solutions:
- Bed Nets: Malaria is transmitted by mosquitos in countries like Mali, Niger, and Senegal. The Foundation and its local partners provided mosquito nets to cover the bedding for children while they sleep.
- Drugs: If the children do contract malaria, life-saving drugs are administered.
COVID-19 has disrupted the entire health system. Death and illness from COVID-19 have taken the focus away from being able to provide delivery of both the Bed Nets and necessary drugs. The attention to malaria is displaced by treating COVID-19. The data projections of how this can impact deaths due to malaria are alarming. In the worst-case scenario, the numbers of malaria-related deaths can climb back to levels seen before the delivery of Bed Net / Drug provisions.
To combat this worst-case scenario, on-the-ground tactics have been devised and are being used. They are changing the approach of how to deliver the Bed Nets and Drugs:
From: Delivery to centralized locations and locals come to pick them up
To: Using Satellite Imaging with maps of where people needing the provisions live and taking the Bed Nets directly to these households.
In so doing, the Foundation is preventing people from spreading COVID-19 when they all congregate at the centralized locations for pick-up. Win-Win for everybody.
Collaboration is Essential
The success that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has had with its 193 world leader partners is proof that working together is the solution to providing productive global solutions. Ending the pandemic is still a very real challenge but there is no doubt that collaboration is essential to the fight and to begin rebuilding economies.
However, they caution that Donor Nations may turn “inward” to protect their own during the pandemic which will cut off the foreign aid and defeat the purpose of collaboration.
“There are many reasons why the COVID-19 pandemic has tested us all to the extreme, but it is its truly global nature that has made it such a profound threat. And yet it is that same universality that also represents our best opportunity to defeat it, and even build a better and fairer world – together. The longer it takes to us to realize that, the longer it will take and the more it will cost to get back on our feet.”
-Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, 2020
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