INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON COVID-19 Learning for the Next Generation Health Systems in Low- and Middle-Income Countries 19 | 20 | 21 | JANUARY 2022

 BRAC James P Grant School of Public Health, BRAC University and Bangladesh Health Watch organised a Virtual International Conference on COVID-19 to discuss the experiences and lessons learned during the two years of the pandemic and reflect on what needs to be done to reform the future health systems ready for addressing the current and future epidemic/pandemics. Besides, the challenges and opportunities of achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and Universal Health Coverage (UHC) in a post-pandemic world was also discussed.

The unfolding of the Covid-19 pandemic over the past two years has repeatedly shown the importance of a resilient and well-resourced health system in overcoming a crisis intersecting across different sectors beyond health such as the education, economy, livelihood, social protection, gender, and governance. There have been variations in how countries responded differently to the pandemic, depending upon social, political, economic and cultural settings. The end of the pandemic is nowhere in sight as new variants such as Delta and Omicron variant emerge with questions about immune evasion, break-through infection, transmissibility, virulence, vaccine access and excess, and so forth.

Two years into the crisis, questions are being raised about the post-pandemic world. How can the crisis be best utilized to reform the health systems for the future? History has shown that political crises could help transform health systems in many countries if the opportunity is seized. The great influenza pandemic of the early twentieth century led to revamping medical education in the United States. The post WWII UK and Europe is another example which saw a new generation of universal healthcare systems. In recent times, Rwanda (1990s civil war led to UHC for all) and Thailand (Asian financial crisis hastened UHC rollout) are two glaring examples.

This conference brought together experts, from home and abroad, to discuss the lessons that are being learned and reflect on what needs to be done to address the critical gaps as we move forward.

The three-day virtual conference will cover the following sub-themes:

1.    What have we learned from the pandemic thus far? Who are affected most? What has been the impact on health and livelihood of the population?

2.    How has governments and health systems responded to containment; Which responses worked and which did not? Who are left behind? How did the local community respond? How did the international community respond?

3.    How effective and culture-sensitive has been the risk communication? How have the data systems at the national and local level helped and guided decision-making by the governments? How did the overall system of governance in health sector work?

4.    Why we need social science to contain a pandemic? How social science helped in in-depth understanding of people’s Covid-19 related behaviour and implement a context-specific inclusive and community-based intervention?

5.    How do we prepare for the next pandemic? What kind of post-pandemic health systems we aspire? What needs to be done to ensure an effective, equitable and accountable healthcare system?

The virtual conference was held during 19 – 21 January, 2022. Each day there were two sessions, each of 90 minutes duration and included topical presentations, panel discussion and Q&A session. Participants were drawn from different parts of the world representing governments, international and bilateral organizations, civil society, non-governmental organizations, private sector, academia and the media.

For details of the issues discussed in different sessions, pl visit: https://iccovid19.bracjpgsph.org/