ECONOMIES in Asia and the Pacific region must invest in improved data systems to better manage the next pandemic and save lives, according to the Asian Development Bank.
In an Asian Development Blog, ADB Macroeconomic Research Division Principal Economist Arief Ramayandi, ADB Institute Senior Research Fellow Daniel Suryadarma, and ADB Economic Analysis and Operational Support Division senior Economist Minhaj Mahmud said only half of ADB’s 46 Developing Member Countries had data on health facilities or equipment.
The economists also said countries with data on health facilities and equipment included those whose information have not been updated for over a decade. They also said available data on hospital beds or even intensive care units were missing or lacking.
“Recovering fully from these disruptions will take many years, especially in developing economies. The challenge now is to grab this post-pandemic opportunity to better prepare health systems for the next pandemic, in whatever form it takes. A key takeaway is that better data management can lead to a better response,” the economists said.
The authors noted that data availability was not the only issue during the pandemic. They also noted data reliability and validity issues that often led to misinterpretation.
They noted that countries with better data infrastructure as well as access to broadband internet not only managed the pandemic better, but also had lower Covid-19 severity.
“Governments must work to make better health systems data available as rapidly available data, data wrangling, and data analysis are vital,” the economists said.
The pandemic, the authors said, “shocked” countries, even those who experienced the SARS and MERS outbreaks. This highlighted the lack of investments in public health.
They said investments were insufficient as traditional measures such as the number of hospital beds and public health spending as a percentage of GDP were unable to help better manage the pandemic.
This also made it difficult for countries to conduct surveillance, report, and communicate, and coordinate efforts to respond to Covid-19 cases.
The economists noted the success of these measures in South Korea in testing and digital contact tracing as well as in Thailand and Vietnam on prevention, detection, and reporting cases.
“Economies that successfully contained the virus built responses that involved a broad set of people with diverse expertise across multiple sectors, which enabled them to react swiftly and aggressively,” the authors said.
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