The COVID-19 crisis has shone a spotlight on three of the fundamentals
of using law for health. First, our interdependency. Second, the responsibility we
owe to the most vulnerable among us. And third, our global interconnectedness
First the crisis shows us graphically that our health and well-being and
indeed our lives are inherently interdependent. This is true at all times
but we don't usually experience it this acutely. We've quickly come to understand
our and others roles and responsibilities as spreaders or
potential spreaders of the virus and as having individual needs of a health
system that has finite capacity in personnel, in equipment and in money.
What we do affects others enormously, this is what law for health is really about -
regulating the behaviour of interdependent people. We're capable of
both doing enormous good for one another and significant harm
whether deliberately or unintentionally. Second, we owe particular responsibilities to
the most vulnerable among us. We're seeing this in our awareness of the
susceptibilities of older members of our community and people with pre-existing
health conditions to the virus itself and the need to take particular care for
them. But it's much more than this, it's also the effects of this extraordinary
social and economic dislocation across our societies which is being experienced
differently by different people and groups. We've long known of the
inequalities in health and who becomes unwell and in access to treatment and
ultimate health outcomes and this will over time likely play out in a similar
manner for COVID-19 individuals and families will have very different
experiences depending on whether they have and are able to keep their jobs
have savings they can draw on, where they live
including whether they have a home, their gender, their ethnicity, the safety of
their relationships, their mental health, whether they have any disabilities and
their social connections. While we feel we are in an extraordinary collective
crisis we don't actually experience it collectively or in the same way.
This is another of the imperatives of public health and a
law for health at the same time is trying to do the best for the health of
the entire population we need to look after the most vulnerable.
Third, we are globally interconnected and we always will be.
Obviously we've seen this as the virus has spread as people have moved across
borders, but we're seeing both the connections and the disruptions to
connections in many other ways. Countries are holding on to essential medical
supplies that are urgently needed by other countries: masks, gowns, gloves,
sterilisers, ventilators. Global supply chains have been upended, the norms of
international trade have been smashed, at the same time scientists are working
across countries to track and understand the virus to share their experience in
controlling it and to develop a vaccine as soon as possible.
Countries are closing their borders and focusing on protecting their own people
while this is understandable in modern political systems, we cannot lose sight
of the situation in other places, particularly those where health systems
and social and economic support systems are least able to respond to the crisis.
In Australia's case in particular in the Asia-Pacific region we need to be
thinking both about the decisions we are making now and about how we are going to
put this all back together. There are and will continue to be immediate tests.
Are medical equipment and supplies going to get to the places they are needed when they are needed?
Who gets treated when the health system can't treat everyone?
When we develop a vaccine, as we all hope we will, who's going to get it and how soon?
How much will it cost? Will some countries be left behind?
Recovery from COVID-19 is going to take a long time, both for individual countries and globally.
We won't go back to how things used to be.
At the same time as focusing on the immediate health crisis
we need to be thinking about the values that will guide us through the
difficult times ahead, as both national and global citizens.
And about the legal and regulatory frameworks and capacity
that we'll need to get us through them.