COVID-19 threatens to undo global health progress on SDGs

Kampala, Uganda | THE INDEPENDENT | The progress made by countries to achieve Sustainable Development Goals-SDGs is going to be interrupted by the effects of the COVID-19. The pandemic is causing a significant loss of life, disrupting livelihoods and threatening to undo much of the progress made over the years, according to the 2020 World Health Statistics published by the World Health Organization (WHO).

The report shows that the world had achieved a dramatic scale-up in access to services to prevent and treat HIV, malaria and tuberculosis, while child mortality was also halved thanks to better maternal and child healthcare in several countries. At the same time, low-income countries reported the biggest gains in life expectancy which rose by 11 years between 2000 and 2016.

But despite such gains, the WHO director-general, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus says that the progress of countries sustaining the SDGs by 2030 is going to be slowed by COVID-19.

The SDGs are a collection of 17 global goals designed to lead countries to create better and more sustainable futures for all citizens. The goals were set in 2015 for 2030 targets which include among others, ending global hunger and poverty, all persons in the world enjoying good health and well being and providing clean water.

“The pandemic highlights the urgent need for all countries to invest in strong health systems and primary health care as the best defence against outbreaks like COVID-19 and against the many other health threats that people around the world face every day. Health systems and health security are two sides of the same coin,” he said.

As a result of poor health systems, WHO estimates that this year, approximately 1 billion people (almost 13 per ent of the global population) will be spending at least 10 percent of their household budgets on health care. The majority of these people live in lower-middle-income countries.

Dr Samira Asma, the assistant WHO director-general says that the pandemic has shown that the world needs to improve on basic sanitation and hygiene.

“The COVID-19 pandemic highlights the need to protect people from health emergencies as well as to promote universal health coverage and healthier populations to keep people from needing health services through multisectoral interventions like improving basic hygiene and sanitation,” said Dr Samira Asma, Assistant Director-General at WHO.

In 2017, more than half (55 percent) of the global population was estimated to lack access to safely-managed sanitation services and more than one quarter (29 percent) lacked safely managed drinking water. In the same year, two in five households globally (40 percent) lacked basic handwashing facilities with soap and water in their home.

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