‘Public health risks and economic development: pandemics and epidemics’

The coronavirus that found its birth in China quickly propagated itself to become a public health hazard not only in that country but to the world. As a result, the World Health Organization called the problem an emergency.

This event opens our mind to the connection between public health risks and the economy.

A proper perspective on this problem requires the attention of government so that it can deal with the public health challenge of minimizing any serious damage.

“The immediate concerns.”

The current problem associated with the rapid spread of the coronavirus is a reminder about the country’s state of preparedness with respect to dealing with deadly and communicable diseases.

A country’s health care system is designed to ensure the nation’s health security. Thus, such a system seeks, among its varied tasks, to reduce the spread of diseases, especially those that are endemic to the country and to assure that such diseases do not become epidemics.

A national health system is also part of a system of shields against pandemics. These are epidemics that are of broader geographic scale, often present across countries.

Since the world we live in is globalized, people and goods move across many countries. Trade has allowed countries to specialize in the production of goods which they exchange with other countries through commerce.

A recent study at the Johns Hopkins University focused on the measurement of a global health security capability of countries. It came up with a Global Health Index by country.

The index for 197 countries was calculated, based on a number of health indicators that included prevention, detection and reporting, rapid response, robustness of health systems, and compliance with international norms and risk environment.

The result was predictable. Richer and well-endowed countries had high scores and therefore were much better prepared to deal with health care challenges. The US led the field, with a score of 83.5.

Middle income countries had differing scores in global health security index. Thailand was the most prepared for Asia, at 73.1. The Philippines had a score of 53. It is clear that the Philippine level of preparedness could be much improved. Low income countries had very low scores.

“Disease and economic growth.”

The onset of disease can affect the economic performance of a country.

Different possibilities would happen, depending on the nature and extent of the pandemic. An epidemic of short duration would have only a mild impact on the economy, if at all.

In such a case, its impact is limited to the workers affected and perhaps on the temporary disruption of labor that might be caused by serious sickness.

It is possible that the overall impact could be mild, if the pandemic is of limited nature. So, these challenges of communicable diseases would arise and, eventually, it is as if little had happened, because the emergency was of short duration.

In such cases, the impact on economic conditions are essentially of a sectoral, or microeconomic, nature. Sickness can affect the quality of human resources – labor – in the performance of productive tasks.

Some of the sectoral impacts could be on the industries directly affected by the pandemic. If measures adopted had disrupted particular industries, then the hurt would be felt in those sectors, perhaps a temporary effect on sector demand or on production.

A more serious possibility is a pandemic that has deep duration and a highly disruptive impact on overall economic activity.

What if, instead of Wuhan, the corona-virus had started in a more industrial part of China that ships a lot of exports to the world? The quarantine of the place would have led to work stoppages, to reduction of output, and to unemployment.

That stoppage could trigger some decline in economic activity that leads to recessionary output.

As it is, the stoppage of scheduled flights in and out of Wuhan and other ports of China will cause a serious effect on industries that depend on tourism, on travel. The quarantine also stops the inflow of Chinese tourists to the rest of the world.

“Pandemics and epidemics, long past and present.”

In the course of history, many diseases have decimated large chunks of the world’s population.

The world has a long history of recorded pandemics, that had led to innumerable deaths. Of course, the history is written for those societies that had the capacity to record the past.

Many societies today do not exist because diseases had helped to erase their population without ever having recorded them.

Yet, we can say that the ability of man to control diseases in general represents the hopeful part of the narrative of the world’s struggle against diseases.

World history is full of episodes of deadly pandemics. But alongside this story is also the continuing advance of science and technology which has led to the conquest of many diseases.

Some of the deadliest episodes that have been recorded in medical and social history are bubonic plague, typhus, influenza, tuberculosis, measles, cholera, and in more recent times, the growth of many strains and varieties of viruses of influenza and other newly discovered diseases.

During the middle ages, bubonic plague periodically decimated the populations of Europe. Its conquest came slowly but surely with improved knowledge about hygiene and improved social organization.

It is said that diseases had killed more troops in the deadliest of all wars, the First World War, than those caused by bullets and bombs.

Various strains of the flu have produced similar effects in modern times. One of the most deadly flu pandemics was the Spanish flu of 1918 to 1919 which led to more than 50 million worldwide deaths.

Cholera was a deadly disease for the Philippines in the time of Jose Rizal. But the cholera epidemic of 1902-1904 led to 200,000 deaths in the Philppines.

More recently, the world had experienced new diseases, such as Ebola, Avian flu, El Tor, Asian flu, SARS. There will be more since viruses mutate, evolve and propagate.

Even as this is happening, at least we have confidence that medical science and technology is ahead of the problems posed by diseases.

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