About $15 trillion of global GDP was wiped off because of the demand and supply side interruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic

Consequently, the Federal Government has emphasised the need to strengthen epidemic preparedness in the country, ensure proactiveness, and invest in a resilient health system to prevent, detect, and respond to future pandemics.

Minister of Health and Social Welfare, Prof. Muhammad Ali Pate, who stated this yesterday at the public health symposium on ‘Lessons on Pandemic Preparedness and Response: Insights from China and Nigeria’ in Abuja, noted that in recent years, “we’ve seen from HIV, AIDS, which has been a pandemic that has been with us for a very long time, to new viruses like Nipah virus, to SARS in 2003, to other viruses, Ebola, Zika, to COVID-19, and others that are yet come.”

Pate lamented that the impact of these pandemics, when they occur, ultimately disrupt the course of human civilisation, adding that the global community is still experiencing some of those impacts from COVID-19, even if the pandemic itself has stopped because of the “interconnected nature of our world, which has become far more interconnected than 100 years ago, with globalisation,   the changing ecology, climate change and technological developments that have enhanced our ability to diagnose, but also to respond, but in some areas also could expose vulnerabilities.”

He submitted: “Pandemics are not only a public health issue, but they are also matters of economic security as well.”

Outbreaks start, they get to epidemics, and then they ultimately, if uncontrolled, get to a pandemic, but pandemics do not start overnight. They start from an outbreak and grow until they cover the entire world. And infectious diseases, over the course of human history, have shaped human civilisations. Right from ancient Greece to the Roman times, to the Black Death, the plague in Europe, to the Spanish flu, and most recently to the other imagined, reimagined infectious disease that we have faced.”

The minister, who stressed the need to prioritise and strengthen health security in the country, observed that public health security is linked to economic security and is also linked to national security.

He highlighted the need to expand the primary health care system, increase human resources for health and ensure local production of pharmaceutical and diagnostic products, and not wait for outbreaks before scrambling to produce them.

Pats said President Bola Tinubu has raised a presidential initiative to unlock the healthcare value chain, which had already seen tremendous progress, stressing that almost six new major industrial efforts are underway in the country, and about 20 are in the pipeline that would manufacture various elements.

Also speaking, Minister of State for Health, Dr Adekunle Salako, described pandemics as one of the most disruptive and brutal killers in human history, which the world must always be prepared for in a well-coordinated and equitable manner if the most recent experience from COVID-19 is not to be repeated.