The head of the secretariat of the African Union Commission on Covid-19 has described as concerning the fact that South Africa has absolutely no budget for future pandemics, which was revealed at a “pandemic preparedness plan” webinar last Friday.
The Pillar 10: Pandemic Preparedness Plan webinar was hosted by the Presidency in partnership with the Department of Health and WHO South Africa. During the discussion, head of the secretariat of the AU Commission on Covid-19 Dr Lwazi Manzi said South Africa not having separate funds for pandemic prevention, preparedness and response (PPR) could be problematic in the event of another pandemic, reports News24.
In 2019, President Cyril Ramaphosa launched the Presidential Health Compact, which introduced a five-year roadmap for health systems strengthening reforms under the “10 pillars” towards accelerating universal health coverage, among which were access to medicine, vaccines and health products, community engagements, and information systems and pandemic preparedness.
All were discussed at the webinar, with South African Medical Research Council president and CEO Professor Glenda Gray saying there was a need to invest in science, and Professor Salim Abdool Karim, special adviser on pandemics to the director-general of the WHO, reiterating a need for decisive political leadership to be open to scientific advice.
“There should be a pandemic preparedness plan for surveillance and epidemic intelligence. It is also important to look at medical countermeasures, especially diagnostic, vaccines, therapeutics, and respiratory devices,” he said.
Dr Owen Kaluwa, the WHO country representative, said the agency had developed a new organising framework to guide country pandemic preparedness planning for respiratory pathogens.
The panel said it was critical to build collaboration mechanisms and agreements between the public and private sectors.
“There is a need to strengthen the international health regulation processes in South Africa… build institutional capacity for surveillance, and improve laboratory and genomic-specific capacity at a periphery level. Lab testing is also necessary to detect new variants through timeous and efficient sampling and testing and transport of samples.”
News24 article – A year after Covid-19 nightmare, SA still has no budget for pandemics (Open access)
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The high cost of SA’s hopelessly wrong pandemic models