Collaboration can help eradicate COVID-19
By The Rev. Liberato C.
Bautista
NEW YORK, Apr 23 2020 (IPS)
– Since the founding of the
United Nations in 1945, space
for multilateral policy development
and commitment has
grown. Its growth in the global
health field augurs well as
we find ways to mitigate the
spread of the novel coronavirus.
Multilateralism is a difficult
word, often misconstrued to
be about the global and not
the local and daily life. Perception
plays a major role in
how the public perceives multilateralism.
This is in part due
to the complexity of modern
global challenges, which are
well beyond the capacity of
any one state or even a small
group of states to resolve by
themselves.
The novel coronavirus pandemic
may yet change this
perception.
As the saying goes, all politics
is local. My rejoinder to this is
that one’s local is another’s global.
The local and the global are
simultaneous realities. United
Methodist connectionalism is
akin to multilateralism.
As a church, we address social
issues central to the multilateral
agenda, including health,
migration, peace, climate, and
concerns about global poverty,
trading and commerce, sustainable
development, social
justice, women, children and
gender justice, human rights,
indigenous peoples, and more.
Holistic health, healing and
wholeness are intrinsic to
Methodism and its Wesleyan
roots. John Wesley attended to
both the care for the soul and
for the biological body with his
abundant tips and remedies for
ailments during his time.
Throughout the United Methodist
Contributing Writers: Azad Ali, Tangerine Clarke,
George Alleyne, Nelson King,
Vinette K. Pryce, Bert Wilkinson
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connection, we are doing
advocacy on public health policies
at national legislatures
and multilateral settings. We
are in global mission together
for sustainable development
and humanitarian assistance,
building capacity for peoples
and communities to manage
their healthcare needs.
Our numerous United Methodist
affiliated clinics, hospitals,
colleges and universities
around the world are training
medical, health, social work
and pastoral care professionals.
Human rights intrinsic
to health, healing and
wholeness
Global pandemics such as
the novel coronavirus respect
no sovereign boundaries or
national allegiances. The coronavirus
ravages all peoples
across races and social classes,
but its effects are more devastating
on vulnerable populations
everywhere and on struggling
low- and middle-income
economies around the world.
To mitigate the virulent spread
of COVID-19, we are called by
national authorities to stay at
home, wash our hands, stay
in place and practice physical
distancing. These public
health directives imply that
we have houses to stay in,
water to wash our hands, and
some space where we can move
around and still maintain six
feet distance from each other.
When Philippine government
officials issued the directive
for Filipinos to stay at home,
Norma Dollaga, a United Methodist
deaconess and justice
advocate from the Philippines,
reacted through her Facebook
page: “Stay at home. That’s for
those who have homes. How
about the homeless?”
The reality is that the human
rights to health, housing and
water, along with human mobility,
have long been imperiled in
many places around the world
prior to COVID-19’s onslaught.
Moreover, the health crisis
has been used as an excuse
in other parts of the world to
grab power or tighten national
security laws that are assaulting
civil liberties and violating
democratic rights.
Neither pandemic nor political
or economic exigency can
derogate from the enjoyment
of fundamental human rights.
That the outbreak of COVID-
19 started in Wuhan City in
China has resulted in undue
rise in racist and xenophobic
acts especially against people
of Chinese origin, or Asians
in general. This is on top of
an ongoing surge of populism
and xenophobic nationalism
around the world.
Health is wealth, fund it
robustly
If health is wealth, it behooves
peoples and their governments
to protect it. Health care workers
who are on the front line
against this pandemic should
have all the resources they
need without begging for
them.
A war may have been declared
in the eradication of the novel
coronavirus pandemic. But it is
looking more like the deployment
of war rhetoric and not
the funding that real wars have
received.
National budgets are moral
documents. Health is the true
common wealth that we must
invest human and budgetary
resources to. Yet we know
that defense spending today
far outweighs the puny investments
from national coffers
that health care urgently needs
and strategically deserves.
Global collaboration
is indispensable
The role of the U.N. in forging
global cooperation is crucial,
in times of crisis or calm. Global
cooperation in the surveillance
of emerging viruses and
bacteria is necessary if pandemics
are to be mitigated and
diseases eradicated.
Coordinating this global collaboration
and leading the
development of a vaccine to
treat the COVID-19 disease
gives the public good reason
to trust global institutions
like World Health Organization.
Think of the eradication
of smallpox — and the ongoing
programs to eventually eradicate
polio and malaria — as
examples of how global cooperation
benefits us in our local
daily lives.
To triumph over COVID-19,
comprehensive cooperation
is needed on many fronts —
medical, pharmaceutical,
healthcare workers, mental
health providers, healthcare
facilities. Public and private
coordination is necessary in
ensuring that the supply chain
for much needed testing kits,
ventilators, as well as personal
protective equipment like
N95 face masks, gloves, gowns,
aprons, face shields and respirators
remain unbroken.
A successful multilateral
response requires a “whole-ofgovernment,”
“whole-of-society”
and evidence-based public
health approach. Mitigation
works best when countries
share expertise and scientific
knowledge about threats to
health, to climate, to populations
and to peace and security.
Social inequalities
imperil public health
The Commission on the Social
Determinants of Health established
by WHO in 2005 elaborated
on the disastrous effects
of social inequalities on people’s
health. The intersections
of physical, mental and social
health, healing and wholeness
are abundantly clear.
The commission’s 2008 final
report stated: “The social
determinants of health are
the conditions in which people
are born, grow, live, work and
age. These circumstances are
shaped by the distribution of
money, power and resources
at global, national and local
levels.
The social determinants of
health are mostly responsible
for health inequities — the
unfair and avoidable differences
in health status seen within
and between countries.”
The U.N. commemorates its
75th anniversary this year. It is
an auspicious time to reaffirm
support for its mandates, especially
the securing of health for
all peoples and the planet. A
healthy population makes for a
healthy planet.
Nongovernmental organizations,
including faith-based
organizations like our United
Methodist representations
at the U.N., are in a kairos
moment to help achieve the
U.N.’s mandates.
COVID-19 may have been virulent
and will forever change
the rules of social etiquette
and socialization. But the
novel coronavirus has done
what multilateral negotiations
have not done — pause globalization
and its unbridled
pursuit of profit and capital.
When the world reopens from
the ravages of the virus, we
have a momentous task not
to return to, but to transform,
global and local arrangements
to protect humanity and the
planet, at least from the ravages
of pandemics and social
inequalities.
It comforts me that not all
contagions are deadly. Some
are beneficial. Love and kindness
are. So are hospitality,
mercy and justice.
*This article 0riginally
appeared in UM News”. The
link follows: https://www.
umnews.org/en/news/collaboration
can-help-eradicatecovid
19
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