The campaign against efforts to agree a World Health Organisation (WHO) treaty to increase co-operation to tackle the next pandemic is a threat to global public health, former chief medical officer Tony Holohan has said.
He told the Patrick MacGill Summer School in Glenties, Co Donegal there has been “a lot of talk” and “nonsense” about the WHO wanting to “have the absolute authority to impose lockdowns”.
The text of the WHO Pandemic Treaty has been significantly “watered down” because of opposition from countries spurred on by misinformation campaigns, he added, but the remaining text should be agreed, even if this cannot happen for another year. He said the treaty represents “a significant set of strengthening measures” to stop pandemics “occurring in the first instance and if they do, to limit the impact as much as possible”.
Rejecting criticisms of the treaty, Dr Holohan said it would increase the “level of co-operation and international solidarity” between countries in the face of a global health threat. Reminding his audience that the fifth anniversary of the Covid-19 pandemic would take place in January, he said the highest price was paid by the world’s poorest countries, or by those with health problems in richer countries.
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People “on the wrong side of whatever line you care to draw” faced the highest penalties and will do so again when the next pandemic occurs. “We have to address some of the fundamental causes of inequality that place people at unacceptable risk,” he said.
He declined to offer an opinion on the structure of the State’s upcoming Covid-19 inquiry, but noted Tánaiste Micheál Martin’s desire to ensure an inquiry does not damage the ability of people in future to take responsibility.
One of the lessons to be drawn from the pandemic is that the State needs to create a volunteer corps capable of being ready to step in at a moment’s notice to carry out basic health and administrative duties, Dr Holohan said.
The former chief medical officer said “very large volumes” of staff from community care, speech and language, and other parts of the health service had to be drafted in during the Covid-19 pandemic to carry out basic infection and control, immunisation and contact tracing duties.
“Those services had to be switched off so that we could populate swabbing and vaccination duties,” he said, adding that this created “a major opportunity cost” throughout the health service.
“I’m not trivialising, but these are relatively straightforward tasks”, he said, and it was important not to be “pulling very highly trained, expensive and highly necessary nurses, speech and language therapists, or whatever from their work” to do them.
Meanwhile, he warned about the increasing resistance now being found to “the antibiotics of last resort”, partly caused by over-use among people, though three-quarters of all antibiotics are given to animals.
Emphasising that he was not being “alarmist”, Dr Holohan said antibiotic resistance now poses “an existential threat to modern healthcare” that could and will close hospitals and healthcare.
He said there has been “a complete market failure” to develop new drugs. “It’s simply not worth the investment and cost for companies to invest when there’s so many other opportunities that are safer bets.”
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