RESPONDING TO COVID19
Like everyone else, the staff and patient leaders in the Just Treatment team are reeling from developments over the last few weeks. We desperately hope that the pandemic causes as little loss of life and livelihood as possible, but there is no doubt about the severity of the challenge it poses. Our thoughts go out to everyone coming to terms with this uncertain new normal - and in particular the NHS workers putting their lives on the line to protect us all. We’ve spent the last week rethinking our strategy, figuring out how we can contribute to overcoming it, and ensuring we never allow our health to be threatened in this way again.
Few could have predicted the transformation in our day to day lives that has taken place in less than a week. The coronavirus pandemic is wreaking havoc with everything we’d taken for granted. Pubs, restaurants, cafes, leisure centres, nurseries and schools are closed, the government has advised against all but essential travel outside the UK, countries across the world have closed their borders, and the words ‘self isolating’ and ‘self quarantined’ have become everyday terms.
Hundreds of people in the UK have already died. And that figure will tragically continue to increase, taking our loved ones from us in a cruel and untimely manner. We know how this highly infectious disease spreads, and hard as it may be to avoid social interactions that are so important to us all, we know that right now staying at home will save lives. To protect ourselves and others - particularly those, like our patient leaders, who have conditions like cancer and cystic fibrosis that put them at heightened risk - we must all heed the government advice and maintain contact with friends and family online.
“The pandemic will put the NHS under pressure like never before.”
The pandemic will put the NHS under pressure like never before. Nearly a decade of underfunding has already pushed our health service to the brink, with high levels of stress among overworked staff and a lack of hospital beds meaning we’re ill prepared for this crisis. Already under extreme pressure, these incredible staff will now be supporting us and our loved ones through a pandemic that threatens to overwhelm health systems across the world.
Right now, supporting NHS staff means following government advice and staying at home to limit the spread of the disease.
But beyond that taking those important steps, we also need to ensure we’re doing the best possible job in protecting everyone’s health in this pandemic and its aftermath. The Just Treatment team has been thinking through our response and how we can ensure the voice of those directly affected shapes the actions taken to control and reverse the spread of the COVID19. We’re dropping the plans we had so we can start shaping the government’s response to the virus.
There are immediate actions which need attention - like ensuring all healthworkers have the protective clothing they need; and ensuring the money going from taxpayers to help fund the development of treatments and vaccines comes with strings attached to ensure everyone in the world who needs them can access them.
But this fearful moment in our history must also force a conversation about the type of health service we need for the next generation, and the one after that.
An American volunteer is injected with the first trial vaccine for COVID19. last week But could we have been much more ready to respond to the pandemic?
And we need to ask how we change our profit and monopoly centred medical innovation system following its failure to invest in treatments or vaccines for coronavirus so we’re better prepared next time.
We may not have been able to predict that it would happen now, but knew another coronavirus threat was coming. SARS (which led to a pandemic in 2002) and MERS (first identified in 2012) are also types of coronavirus. Indeed, public funds helped to develop a potential coronavirus vaccine years ago. But the scientists struggled to interest drug companies in funding trials because of the lack of a guaranteed financial return, so it sat on a shelf.
While governments pledge millions to ensure a vaccine can be made available as swiftly as possible, it’s the pharmaceutical companies who have been accused of presenting a “major speed bump” to its development. Despite the high levels of public funding, pharma companies held back until they were guaranteed a profit.
Their reluctance to invest means pharma companies are slowing a process which they should be helping to accelerate. Worse still, pharma companies’ monopolies on the final product, mean, without government action, they are likely to price it out of reach of millions who need it all around the world. Calls for affordability from across the world from the US to Chile must be heeded.
These problems are not new - the pandemic we face is now laying them bare. Right now, we have to ensure that any treatments and vaccines that are developed with public money will be affordable and available to those who need them. We must make sure the NHS has the financial and material support it will need to see it through this crisis. And we must ensure that once this pandemic is over, we have the systems in place that will mean we never have to reach this point again.
Over the coming days we’ll be continuing our thinking on how we can help overcome this pandemic, and how NHS patients can play a greater role in ensuring the government learns every lesson possible so we rebuild our health service and pharmaceutical system better than it was before the world was turned on its head. Watch this space for ways you can get involved.
If you’ve been affected by the coronavirus and want to share your story with the team, please email organise@justtreatment.org