As a signatory, WFME supports the G20 leaders #HealthyRecovery letter requesting that governments directly involve their medical and scientific community in the production of all economic stimulus packages, seek reports from them on the short- and long-term public health repercussions that these may have, and secure their stamp of approval as direct support for health professionals that take care of people when they are at their most vulnerable.
Read the letter text here.
We must use a science-based approach to re-emerge from the coronavirus crisis healthier, better protected and more resilient to future shocks.
Increasing levels of pollution impacting our air and water have been systematically increasing our vulnerability to disease for decades, just as deforestation and unabated climate change have been increasing a broad number of health risks to humans.
A healthy recovery is one that recognises that human, economic and planetary health are closely connected: when all three are healthy, all three are strong. And as Covid-19 has made clear, when human health is compromised, the economy suffers.
The choices that governments, businesses, financiers and investors make in 2020 will determine the conditions we and future generations live in. Already, governments are making decisions about how to direct trillions of US dollars of public funds. Some governments are relaxing or rolling back environmental regulations. The pandemic has shown us how intimately linked health and the economy are, and that any economic recovery must be done in ways that strengthen our health resilience.
Health professionals want their voice to be heard in the historic economic recovery packages now under consideration. They want to ensure that the proposed incentives and disincentives do not thrust us back into a world that continues to undermine human health, and which puts them, their patients and their communities at unnecessary risk.
Leading medical and scientific experts can help guide the economic recovery packages to ensure that public health is at the core of every decision made.