Dealing with Pandemics Today, Preparing for Tomorrow

Caught Unprepared

The COVID-19 pandemic has underscored the importance of national, regional, and worldwide intervention and collaboration to mitigate further damage to economies and population health.

COVID-19 has had catastrophic impacts on social and economic development in Asia and the Pacific. Countries that rely heavily on tourism, such as Cambodia and Thailand, have seen the negative impact of the pandemic on their economies. During the pandemic, airlines and the tourism industry were the first to suffer from travel restrictions, quarantine, border closures, and the fear of infection among travelers.

Households and labor markets are quick to follow as public anxiety over an outbreak reduces participation in the economy. Trade is also disrupted due to quarantine and border control measures, which restrict the movement of goods. In addition to these challenges, COVID-19 caught most countries—if not the entire world—off guard, revealing gaps in the overall response efforts as identified by the World Health Organization (WHO) and other development partners.

According to Dr. Patrick Osewe, chief of ADB’s health sector group, “The pandemic response gaps include inadequate resources for outbreak response plus a lack of robust economic analysis and other evidence to support decision-making. In addition, there is weak coordination among different sectors.”

Since the start of the pandemic, ADB has collaborated with development partners and scaled up financing for COVID-19 response. Key activities include assessing the pandemic, implementing an emergency response plan, and taking immediate actions to prevent or minimize the spread of the disease. Because the nature and massive scope of the outbreak evolved rapidly, additional flexible resources were necessary.

Partners Help Out

With cofinancing from the High-Level Technology Fund, the Republic of Korea e-Asia and Knowledge Partnership Fund, Ireland Trust Fund for Building Climate Change and Disaster Resilience in Small Island Developing States, and the People’s Republic of China Poverty Reduction and Regional Cooperation Fund, ADB approved the technical assistance (TA) on Regional Support to Address the Outbreak of Coronavirus Disease 2019 and Potential Outbreaks of Other Communicable Diseases.

“This technical assistance will help increase the capacities of developing member countries in the prevention and containment of outbreaks like COVID-19,” Osewe shared.

Specifically, the TA’s support involves conducting economic and health system assessments on the potential effect of COVID-19, expanding access to safe and effective COVID-19 vaccines, building capacity for health security and COVID-19 vaccine delivery, and designing health security projects to address and counter infectious diseases.

The design and the development of strategies to improve access to COVID-19 vaccines, the capabilities to deliver them, and the capacity to prepare and respond to future health threats are also underway.

– Patrick Osewe, chief of ADB’s health sector group

Shifting Gears for a More Significant Impact

Over time, the TA underwent some changes, which allowed it to better respond to ADB’s developing members. For example, its scope was expanded to include vaccine-related country-readiness assessments and training of health workers in the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) countries. In addition, a scoping study was completed on medical waste management and recruitment of advocacy, community engagement, and social mobilization firms to address vaccine hesitancy.

Other areas of expansion included genomic sequencing and assistance on health security, infectious diseases, and COVID-19 vaccines to GMS countries.

Results So Far

To date, 40 DMCs have benefited from the $37.1 million funding support used to procure and deliver personal protective equipment, testing kits, thermal scanners, ventilators, and other goods. In addition, health system assessments, including vaccine-related assessments, have started in Indonesia and the Philippines.

“The design and the development of strategies to improve the DMCs’ access to COVID-19 vaccines, the capabilities to deliver them, and the capacity to prepare and respond to future health threats are also underway,” Osewe shared.

Communication strategy guidelines and a communication practice playbook have been developed for the Philippines to help strengthen regional and country-specific vaccine delivery and health security capacities. As part of the third output of the project, the British Medical Journal (BMJ) launched the COVID-19 Information Centre, an online training platform available to DMCs that provides quick access to the relevant and latest information and guidelines on COVID-19. This equipped health professionals from the DMCs with the knowledge to provide the best care to their COVID-19 patients. As of 31 December 2021, over 40,000 users have accessed the site, and thousands have signed up to the platform. The most significant users are from Georgia, India, Kazakhstan, Pakistan, and the Philippines. Furthermore, in 2021, the BMJ organized webinars on preparing the workforce for COVID-19 vaccination, learnings from leading COVID-19 vaccine programs, and COVID-19 vaccine safety.

In India, the project supports the assessment, planning, implementation, and monitoring of their COVID-19 response. It also mobilized experts to support the country’s capacity in critical COVID-19 response areas, including laboratory management, border health, water and sanitation, pandemic preparedness and response planning, and digital health advisory services.