Panama City, March 20, 2023 – Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) Director Garbas Barbosa has called for a closer alliance between the health and economic sectors to avoid a “triple crisis” like that resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic, which is putting economies, safety nets and health systems on the edge the border.
“Never before have the arguments in favor of investing in health and health economics been so clear, and the consequences of underinvesting in health have never been so clear,” said the PAHO director at the inaugural meeting of the Economic and Health Dialogue in the Americas. An initiative that brings together representatives of the Ministries of Health and Finance from 17 countries to discuss a coordinated approach to recovery in the region.
“Health systems were underfunded and ill-prepared for what was to come,” said Dr. Barbosa, referring to the regional context before the pandemic. This resulted in the region suffering more COVID-19 cases and deaths than any other country and leaving 34 million people out of work in Latin America and the Caribbean in the first year of the pandemic alone.
But he added that the COVID-19 pandemic “has also shown what we can achieve when the health and economic sectors work together.”
The PAHO director said that the region had seen the largest increase in the provision of health services, and that the PAHO had staged the largest response in its 120-year history to support member states.
He stressed that “the Pan American Health Organization has distributed more than 270 tons of personal protective equipment to 35 countries and regions, and has supported the delivery of more than 1.35 billion doses of vaccines against COVID-19 to countries in Latin America and the Caribbean.”
The region has also taken “transformative steps to expand its scientific and technological capacity,” rapidly deploying digital tools to ensure patients continue to receive care and ramping up work to develop and produce vaccines and other critical health technologies. “We will have to maintain these efforts,” he said.
The Director of the Pan American Health Organization urged an increase in public spending on health above current levels of 4.4% of GDP to build more resilient health systems, with primary health care as the basis for meeting the health needs of people and communities. He lives.
He also called for more coordination on cross-cutting issues affecting both the health and economic sectors, such as strengthening regulatory capacity and supply chains for medical products.
“Investing in health is a political decision and, moreover, the right one,” concluded Dr. Barbosa. “Protecting health in our region is essential to promoting economic and social development, and achieving peace and security.”
The Economic and Health Dialogue of the Americas (EHA) is a mechanism to enable coordinated and strategic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic in the region, working together to improve health financing and enhance analysis of healthcare resources, healthcare sector transformation, revenue protection during pandemics and medical supply chains.
Together with the Director of the Pan American Health Organization, the first meeting of the EHA in the Panamanian capital included the US Assistant Secretary of State for Economic Growth, Energy, and the Environment, Jose W. Fernandez; Panama’s Foreign Minister, Janina Tewani; Secretary General of the Organization of American States Luis Almagro. and Director of the Social Sector at the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), Ferdinando Regalia.
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