World Humanitarian Day 2022: Developed Healthcare System Needed For Next Pandemic

World Humanitarian Day is observed to pay tribute to people helping people. The day signifies importance and role of humanitarian personnel.

It is very well known that in the midst of a worldwide pandemic, covid 19, remarkable necessities and developing frailty, aid and healthcare workers had been remaining and conveying to the world's most weak individuals. The frontline workers in the last two years, prioritised common people's health and their prevention from the virus.

Manav Subodh, Founder of 1M1B said, “The pandemic saw many heroes, but the big ones were our frontline workers who went beyond themselves in fighting the virus. The fight also exposed the loopholes in our system and the conduct of common citizens. From the spread of fake news to inequality to migrant workers’ crisis to attacks on doctors and frontline workers we saw it all."

The great battle with the invisible

As the COVID-19 pandemic has been a great battle between the frontline workers and the virus, their commitment, steadiness and generosity address the best of humankind as they answer the COVID-19 emergency with courage and awareness.

Sandeep Chachra, Executive Director, ActionAid Association said, "It privileges aggressive, authoritarian and top-down responses to what is a humanitarian crisis. We need to recognise the people who provided selfless service and protection to all of us at great peril to themselves. These were essentially frontline workers, who have largely remained invisible."

There were some common public as well who provided help to the primary people in need, like the refugees, members of civil-society organisations and local health workers. They brought food, shelter, healthcare, protection, oxygen and a good example of humanity amid the crisis.

"Firstly, the more than one million Accredited Social Health Activists, or ASHA workers who took the medical interventions to communities across the length and breadth of the country, and especially in the lanes of slums and to the remotest villages deserve special mention. Then there were the many millions of informal workers who brought what we needed to our doors, and continued to make essential services run. These include street vendors, delivery persons, the agents who came to collect samples for testing, sanitary workers who kept the cities clean and took away garbage, the crematorium workers who gave a dignified end to people who died, often when even close families could not be present", Chachra added.

Future-ready for next pandemic battle

While fighting against the coronavirus, number of healthcare workers and police personnel have been infected by it. Therefore, it is to be made sure that the frontline workers prepare themselves for next such unpleasant situation in the future.

To deal with a viral disease, the neccessary means of any country is its healthcare system. So the covid pandemic has been an unmistakable sign of the need to universally fabricate strong healthcare frameworks by every resource.

On this Sandeep Chachra said, "Firstly, we should recognise the ongoing crises in the lives of frontline workers. ASHA workers have been asking for decent working conditions. Informal workers live in continuous precarity. We have been long arguing that the basic needs of shelter, nutrition, health and education should be assured for all residents of our country. The scale of the humanitarian crisis as seen during the COVID-19 pandemic would have been much less if this had been provided from before."

"As a next step there is need to provide recognition for the role played by informal workers in different sectors, and specific efforts should be taken to reduce drudgery, risk and professionalise the operations to make each worker more effective and productive. This calls for drudgery reducing technology, safety and protective gear and decent working conditions with eight-hour work shifts, decent wages and income and insurance. For too long have we as a society depended on compulsion of circumstances to force our informal workers to serve us", he further said.

Manav Subodh said, "To prepare ourselves to handle such crises better we need to empower and enable first our front-line workers. Soft skills and emergency response training are critical. Front line workers need to be trained on how to handle panic situation, upset families, mob-like situations do’s and don’ts, and how to protect themselves. We also need stricter rules and protocols to protect front-line workers."

It is the fact, that the government of India has managed the pandemic condition across the country in a far better way than it was predicted by the other nations, yet there's a need to develop our healthcare system with technologies, medicine resource, health workers, hospital facilities, and more.