Senate Bill a Big Win for Health Workers around the Globe

By David Bryden, Director of the Frontline Health Workers Coalition and senior policy and advocacy advisor at IntraHealth International Photo of health workers in Mali by Nana Kofi Acquah for IntraHealth International. IntraHealth leads the secretariat for the Frontline Health Workers Coalition.August 05, 2021Even as the world is struggling to address COVID-19, we must plan and prepare for future pandemics. In fact, a recent estimate shows that the probability of a future zoonotic spillover event resulting in a pandemic of COVID-19 magnitude or larger is high: a 22-28% chance within the next ten years. With this risk in mind, the leadership of the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee has been building a fresh approach to global health security. Their internal negotiations, and dialogue with civil society, culminated in a vote last week on a landmark piece of bipartisan legislation—theInternational Pandemic Preparedness and COVID-19 Response Act.Going well beyond previous bills on this topic, this measure includes important provisions on the health workforce and health systems. That’s important for many reasons, but one is that many countries are finding weak health systems to be an impediment to rapid scale-up of COVID-19 vaccination. There is a risk that later this year vaccine supplies could far exceed country capacity to administer them.Senators Risch (R-ID), the Committee’s ranking member, and Menendez (D-NJ), the Committe...
Source: IntraHealth International - Category: International Medicine & Public Health Authors: Tags: Policy & Advocacy Global health security Health Workforce Systems Source Type: news