LWill the setting up of a health risk monitoring and anticipation committee at the end of July allow better consideration of scientific alerts on threats to our health? We can hope so, but the progress that this body could bring will remain limited if the economic and industrial policies that guarantee effective responses to present and future health challenges are not thoroughly rethought.
Two and a half years after the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, monkey pox, known for decades in Africa, is spreading in rich countries. The belated response of governments to this new threat is conducted with tools developed against human smallpox, due to a lack of appropriate funding when it mainly affected poor countries. Significant threats weigh on Taiwan, and the possible escalation of tensions between the United States and China could have a direct impact on the production of pharmaceutical raw materials, which are particularly concentrated in this country. The situation is reminiscent of the one we experienced in France, in the spring of 2020, where our dependence on Asian production, then halted by containment measures, had dramatically resulted in tensions over essential drugs in the hospitals.
The philosopher Cynthia Fleury had described in April 2020 the Covid-19 pandemic as ” general repetition “. A recent study by Public Health France estimates at 30% the rate of people infected with Sars-CoV-2 who then develop a long Covid, the consequences of which are still poorly understood, but which include a significant increase in cardiovascular risks. To date, the pandemic has claimed at least 6.5 million lives. Could we have been better prepared for it?
Our model is poorly armed
What is certain is that warnings – such as those concerning the health consequences of massive deforestation, damage to biodiversity or intensive farming – have been issued for decades by many scientists, and that those these have not translated into research priorities. For example, the European Commission in 2015 denied funding to research teams studying coronaviruses.
Due to environmental changes, new pandemics are likely to emerge, with more lethal and more transmissible pathogens. The evolution of lifestyles, the human impact on the environment or climate change also favor the explosion of certain other pathologies, such as cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, cancers. Antibiotic resistance, one of the worst threats to humanity according to the World Health Organization (WHO), can compromise decades of biomedical advances and cause an increasing number of deaths – it already causes 35,000 deaths. per year in the United States, 33,000 in Europe, including 5,000 in France. Age-old diseases such as tuberculosis are also in full resurgence. Finally, the aging of the population on a global scale is also a significant factor in the increase in the need for health products.
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