US President Donald Trump may have taken aim at the World Health Organisation’s initial response to the coronavirus, but the body’s swift action in the Pacific region appears to have so far prevented a major calamity on Australia’s doorstep.
At a global level the World Health Organisation may at times be mired in politics and bureaucracy, but on the ground WHO-funded programs have long been the key to better health outcomes in our region.
Throughout the Pacific WHO assists in service delivery through the provision of health programs, medical staff, drugs and outreach services – with Australian aid staff often at the frontlines.
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China and India dominate the organisation’s management in the Pacific, but it’s clear early lockdowns and travel bans advised by WHO officials in the Pacific made a difference.
While the leaders of developed nations fretted over the economic cost of action, those measures – along with outreach education on hygiene and social distancing – appear to have helped smaller Pacific nations avoid major outbreaks.
Aid agency CARE Australia stated in a recent analysis that Timor-Leste and Papua New Guinea were the major concerns in our region, but so far confirmed cases are low.
The real concern is if there are undetected transmissions in the community.
Australian medical staff and aid agencies have been helping direct the response among our northern neighbours where health services are often patchy at best.
Despite this, nations like Timor-Leste were clearly more rigorous in their screening of cruise ships and tourists in Dili than Australian authorities in Sydney, particularly in the early weeks of February when there was growing concern about viral transmission into south-east Asia.
Complicating the response in the Pacific this month has been the destruction wrought by Cyclone Harold, which hit the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, Fiji and Tonga.
It’s a feature of the region that there’s rarely one health crisis to deal with at any one time, with PNG’s UN resident co-ordinator Gianluca Rampolla acknowledging that there were 300 vulnerable communities in that country that would need extra resources to tackle the coronavirus.
“The same amazing UN team that assisted PNG respond to the 2018 Highlands earthquake and that worked hard to ensure the polio outbreak be stopped in six months, that very same team is here on the frontlines, to work hand in hand with the government and the people of PNG to contain and mitigate the COVID-19,” Mr Rampolla said in a statement.
The head of Pacific and International Health at the University of Auckland, Colin Tukuitonga, told the BBC that the cyclone had made a tough job in controlling the pandemic even harder.
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“In theory, all islands will have a pandemic plan in place, but it’s one thing to have a plan and another thing to put that into practice,” Dr Tukuitonga said.
“And when you have a cyclone, that compromises all the planning.”
Although PNG has so far had only a handful of confirmed cases and recently received 30 new ventilators from WHO, Dr Tukuitonga said health systems in the Pacific would be unable to cope if there is a major outbreak.
“There are nowhere near the number of ventilators and intensive-care beds and they can’t test for the virus in many of these places,” Dr Tukuitonga said.
“That’s why their aim to keep the virus out is important.
“They went into lockdown earlier than most, closed borders, quarantined citizens. So they’ve been pretty proactive.”
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Timor-Leste remains a concern, with six confirmed cases as of Tuesday and 34 still waiting for the test result.
There are also 570 people in quarantine shelters set up by the government.
WHO’s 194 member states pay membership fees calculated on a nation’s wealth and population in a bid to bring better healthcare to the vulnerable.
In recent years WHO had made a priority of boosting midwifery healthcare in the Pacific.
It claimed to have eliminated measles and was working towards a goal of eradicating TB, but those programs are now taking a back seat to the fight against COVID-19.
