* By Andros Karagiannis
The coronavirus pandemic has highlighted the need to ensure public health, both nationally, Europeanly and globally. The deaths from the pandemic and the millions of people who became ill should concern us and force us to prepare properly to avoid other similar pandemics.
The health sector definitely needs properly qualified scientific medical and paramedical staff, as well as the appropriate infrastructure for the provision of public care and healthcare. The pandemic has highlighted the weaknesses of the health system at European level, as several Member States, as well as the European Commission itself, were unprepared to deal with the emergency resulting from the rapid spread of the virus.
The recent health crisis has had a number of economic and social consequences for civil society, and the workload of medical and paramedical staff in hospitals, as well as civil servants in the public health sector, has risen sharply.
Employees in both public and private hospitals, in addition to their ongoing training, need the uninterrupted support of the state, so that they can face the new pandemics and challenges. But to make this possible, funding from central states and the European Union is needed. EU member states are called upon to work closely together and to take measures for the organization, proper functioning, support and configuration of the health system and the social benefits they offer to patients.
The EU through the EU4Health program (The EU for health) invests in strengthening and improving health systems at European level, so that they are properly prepared for future pandemics. The program also aims at the immediate availability, affordability of medicines and other pandemic-related products.
Europe must prioritize public health and ensure that it has state-of-the-art health systems ready to provide immediate care to deal with other epidemics and threats to human health.
The public health sector does not discriminate in the health status and care of groups of the population, nor further burden and suffering in patients with cancer, mental illness, rare diseases and so on.
Local authorities as well as health professionals are at the forefront of dealing with the pandemic. They do their best by taking all the health and preventive measures to inform the public about the provision of free examinations - to prevent the spread of the pandemic - and the supply of medical equipment.
The crisis must be managed on an organized basis, both at local, national and European level. All stakeholders should address the common, long-term challenges, as well as access to public care for all citizens. Member States' health systems need to be made more resilient so that they can deal with any kind of pandemic at all times and at the same time promote innovation in medical care.
But to deal with new pandemics, which are likely to spread due to climate change and environmental pollution, a lot of money will have to be spent on medical research. The coronavirus pandemic has shown that pandemics know no national boundaries, as it is now a global phenomenon. So we could very well talk about the "globalization" of the pandemic.
The cooperation of experts in the scientific community at European level requires the promotion, development, production and distribution of drugs or vaccines to control the uncontrolled spread of pandemics, as well as the strengthening of public and private medical care and research.