The Future Of Public Health After The Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected various public health functions and essential services in different ways and magnitudes depending on the integrity and resiliency of the countries’ health systems.

Public Health Services during Pandemic

The COVID-19 outbreak has greatly challenged the health care system due to absence of adequate mechanism for information sharing, expanding public health measures, protecting health workers, achieving behavior change, ensuring continuity of essential health services, and establishing reliable supply chains. Other issues include-

• Scarcity of health facilities at all levels, and particularly primary healthcare,
• Incoherence in implementing health laws and policies,
• Weak administration and governance and poor status of implementation of national policies,
• A less integrated healthcare system,
• An indifferent attitude of the public toward protective measures,
• Funding crisis,
• Voluntary, unorganized and fragmented contribution of private sector,
• Shortage of health professionals, lack of the required competencies or the exhaustion of the working staff,
• Poor capacity of public health laboratories,
• Misinformation, rumors and false news regarding pandemic,
• Lasting impact on many people’s mental health and well-being.

Future of Public Health

There has to be a clear holistic plan for preparedness and response to a pandemic. Following changes are anticipated in the future of public health at the global, regional, and national levels:

• Integrated Healthcare System: Establishment of a clear coordination mechanism and collaboration between the health care communities, public health professionals, sub-national management, educational institutions, NGOs, transport, security agencies, and other line ministries.
• Increase Private Sector Participation: Create a special platform or task force to engage the private sector in the national response to outbreaks like COVID-19.
• Disease Surveillance System: In response to COVID-19, there is need to adopt innovative solutions and new surveillance tools to run a robust real-time national integrated disease surveillance system with real-time data reported daily. This will provide information about the sections of the population most at risk, which will help to develop targeted interventions to contain the disease spread in the population.Further strengthening and digital linkage of this laboratory network will serve as a mechanism for laboratory-based surveillance of diseases other than COVID-19 as well.
• Developing Primary Health Care: There is need to increase investment in Primary Health Care, point of care, such as testing of common infectious diseases and measures to prevent the spread of infections. It is necessary to improve access to vaccinations, screening, education, counseling, and supporting access to treatment. Further there should be conduction of mass screening at the community level to better understand and manage the pandemic.
• Focus on mental health and well-being:There is a need to support people’s recovery and resilience, public mental health and statutory mental health services, alongside the community welfare sector and maintain a focus on vital preventative work.
• Improve Number of Healthcare Professionals: The number of qualified healthcare professionals and services like qualified doctors, nurses, technicians need to be increased and uniform accessibility to healthcare across the rural and urban areas need to be ensured. Further AYUSH doctors can be roped in to improve doctor to population ratio. Increased numbers of community health workers can help in delivery of health services to large number of people.
• Capacity Building of Health Professionals: There is need for – updating medical and health curricula; specialized training as part of professional development and enriching the core competencies, leadership and management skills of health professionals.
• Funding and Investment: The pandemic has created the demand for better funding and investment in public health. There is need of more investment for-
  • Developing a sustainable service delivery for bringing health care to patients, to eliminate doctor-patient visits whenever possible, for increasing the use of telemedicine, for manufacturing health commodities, and for strengthening supply chains.
  • Research and technology to meet the demand for new vaccines and medicines
  • Strengthening lab capacity and health system by establishing functional, properly equipped, and ably manned public health laboratories.
  • Building automated contact tracing services and developing new rapid tests including immunity testing for antibodies.
• Strengthening Public Health Laws: There is need to clearly define legal powers, enforce updated public health law and ensure the clarity of roles, relationships, and coordination mechanisms in health system governance and across governments for minimizing the transmission of infectious diseases.
• Improving Risk Communication Strategies: Robust efforts need to be made to have an effective risk communication mechanism to prevent misinformation and false rumors about the disease.

A responsive health care system is needed to mount an effective response to any health-related emergency. The health system should be well equipped to handle epidemics of any scale in the future.