COVID-19 in the least developed, fragile, and conflict-affected countries - How can the most vulnerable be protected?

Copyright © 2020 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved..

The relentless spread of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) and its penetration into the least developed, fragile, and conflict-affected countries (LDFCAC) is a certainty. Expansion of the pandemic will be expedited by factors such as an abundance of at-risk populations, inadequate COVID-19 mitigation efforts, sheer inability to comply with community mitigation strategies, and constrained national preparedness. This situation will reduce the benefits achieved through decades of disease control and health promotion measures, and the economic progress made during periods of global development. Without interventions, and as soon as international travel and trade resume, reservoirs of COVID-19 and other vaccine-preventable diseases in LDFCAC will continue 'feeding' developed countries with repeated infection seeds. Assuring LDFCAC equity in access to medical countermeasures, funds to mitigate the pandemic, and a paradigm change in the global development agenda, similar to the post-World War II Marshall Plan for Europe, are urgently needed. We argue for a paradigm change in strategy, including a new global pandemic financing mechanism for COVID-19 and other future pandemics. This approach should assist LDFCAC in gaining access to and membership of a global interdisciplinary pandemic taskforce to enable in-country plans to train, leverage, and maintain essential functioning and also to utilize and enhance surveillance and early detection capabilities. Such a task force will be able to build on and expand research into the management of pandemics, protect vulnerable populations through international laws/treaties, and reinforce and align the development agenda to prevent and mitigate future pandemics. Lifting LDFCAC from COVID-related failure will offer the global community the best economic dividends of the century.

Medienart:

E-Artikel

Erscheinungsjahr:

2021

Erschienen:

2021

Enthalten in:

Zur Gesamtaufnahme - volume:102

Enthalten in:

International journal of infectious diseases : IJID : official publication of the International Society for Infectious Diseases - 102(2021) vom: 15. Jan., Seite 381-388

Sprache:

Englisch

Beteiligte Personen:

Ebrahim, Shahul H [VerfasserIn]
Gozzer, Ernesto [VerfasserIn]
Ahmed, Yusuf [VerfasserIn]
Imtiaz, Rubina [VerfasserIn]
Ditekemena, John [VerfasserIn]
Rahman, N M Mujeeb [VerfasserIn]
Schlagenhauf, Patricia [VerfasserIn]
Alqahtani, Saleh A [VerfasserIn]
Memish, Ziad A [VerfasserIn]

Links:

Volltext

Themen:

COVID-19
Conflict-countries
Journal Article

Anmerkungen:

Date Completed 14.01.2021

Date Revised 14.04.2021

published: Print-Electronic

Citation Status MEDLINE

doi:

10.1016/j.ijid.2020.10.055

funding:

Förderinstitution / Projekttitel:

PPN (Katalog-ID):

NLM316986453