THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC IS JUST LIKE THE 2008 GFC – IT REFLECTS GREED FROM WEALTHY INDUSTRIES AND POOR GOVERNANCE
Every year we lose over 8 million lives and $6 trillion in global GDP as a result of deprived healthcare access. According to the WHO, approximately half of the global population does not have access to appropriate healthcare and over 100 million people a year fall below the poverty line through ridiculous medical bills.
On the other hand, the pharmaceutical industry makes an estimated revenue of over $1 trillion a year. This undeniably wealthy industry makes profit by jacking up prices in poor countries with decentralised health systems and monopolising healthcare expenditure – a behaviour that causes social inequality, underfunding in the public sector and lack of primary health access.
The 2008 GFC was such a big scandal as major U.S banks used poor people to make short-term money on flimsy home loans that would ultimately crash the world economy. Similarly, some of the biggest pharmaceutical companies are draining impoverished health systems to make money at the expense of depriving millions from healthcare access and preventing countries from investing more money in their own public health.
If we had controlled this behaviour from the pharmaceutical industry, we would have better health systems in place around the world and the public health response to contain COVID-19 would have been much more efficient.
In China for instance, 40% of the health budget goes towards pharmaceuticals (an enormous amount). This massive pharma expenditure is a result of overpriced medicines and drug over-prescription.
The lack of public health investment and pharmaceutical overfunding has caused a shortage of GPs and primary healthcare professionals in China due to low wages.
Pharmaceutical companies take advantage of this situation by enticing doctors to over prescribe patients with very pricey medicines in exchange of generous commissions. Such behaviour causes patients to spend extravagant amounts of money in drugs, generating large revenues for the Chinese government and pharmaceutical companies.
This phenomenon happens all around the world. In African countries such as Zambia and Senegal, a Paracetamol can cost up to 10 times more than in the UK. On average, the poorest countries spend up to 67% of health expenditure in pharmaceutical whereas wealthy countries only spend 15 – 30%.
During the past 6 years, major epidemics such as COVID-19, Ebola and the Zika virus have originated in countries with poorly developed and underfunded health systems. The 53 poorest countries in the world only account for 1% of the global health expenditure and scarily are countries that have experienced health outbreaks more frequently in the past years.
Imagine if we were able to re-invest only 5% of the global pharmaceutical revenue into global health. We would be investing over $50 billion which is 10 times more funding than what the WHO is getting over the current 2020-2021 period.
A funding like that would prevent trillions of dollars to be lost annually over preventable deaths. This money could be used to fund sustainable health systems in developing countries. That way, we would be more likely to prevent outbreaks from getting out of hand like COVID-19 did.
Camilo S. Rodriguez Espinosa
Scientist, allied health professional and founder of The Global Health Post.