Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama stresses that the sooner we achieve equitable access to healthcare and the resources to build resilient health systems, the better off all of us will be.
He says this pandemic cannot serve as a model for future health disasters.
While addressing the Commonwealth Foreign Affairs Ministers Meeting, Bainimarama says it’s time we reckon with the failures that fanned the flames of the pandemic’s devastation.
He says when the first waves of fear and uncertainty hit us, masks, ventilators, testing kits, and PPEs were siphoned off by nations with the markets and the means to pay for large-scale shipments. Fiji, and many other SIDS, spent critical months at the back of the queue for these life-saving essentials.
He adds as supply chains stabilised, medical equipment and supplies eventually found their way everywhere they were needed. But the advent of life-saving vaccines re-ignited the same strains of nationalism.
He stresses that solving issues of global equity in healthcare cannot happen soon enough.
Bainimarama adds our changing climate is unleashing new viral vectors.
He says other climate impacts, like cyclones and storm surges, threaten to weaken existing health systems and destroy decades of progress in healthcare infrastructure.
The Prime Minister says this pandemic cannot serve as a model for future health disasters.
He stresses that it is a lesson in the vital importance of access and equity for all.
Bainimarama adds heeding its failures does not demand some multilateral miracle, it simply requires respect for the founding principles of our international system and a greater commitment to those most vulnerable among us.
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