NEW DELHI: A growing group of public health, social justice and human rights advocates have released a ‘Call to Action to heads of state and government to put the community at the centre of the COVID-19 response.’

The Call, Reclaiming Comprehensive Public Health, sets out 10 principles to guide leaders towards more comprehensive and effective action to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic and future global health challenges through stronger, more equitable public health approaches. The Call advocates highlight that this will save more lives and livelihoods.

The Call has the endorsement of public health and social justice advocates from across the globe including Dr Devaki Nambiar, and Dr Soumyadeep Bhaumik from the George Institute for Global Health India; Bhavesh Jain, physician; Dr Sayan Das, Centre from Social Medicine and Community Health, Jawaharlal Nehru University and Dr Nitin Bajpai of Sarvodaya Gram Udyog Sansthan. The call has been translated into a lot of Indian languages including Kannada, Hindi and Gujarati. 

“Early in the pandemic, the dominant response from global leaders was biomedical, top-down, command-and-control oriented, with people and civil society largely ‘locked-out’ of meaningful decision-making. We cannot afford the same narrow and limited approach,” said Professor Kent Buse, Director of Healthier Societies program, The George Institute for Global Health, adding that “We all stand to gain if leaders ensure that all parts of society are actively engaged in shaping the pandemic response.”

“The Call stems from concern on how governments across the world managed COVID-19, ignoring comprehensive health systems    responses during COVID-19. At the same time, there are many examples of action that align with the Call, invariably by putting communities at the heart of response” said Soumyadeep Bhaumik from The George Institut.

He further said that for instance, we in India conducted rapid evidence synthesis to understand how community health workers can be at the forefront of the COVID-19 response and successfully engaged with the government. The Call aims to bring attention to leaders that this is indeed better and together we can do better for everyone, he added.

Over 250 individuals and leading organisations and networks – including a range of global health initiatives, schools of public health, development institutes, international and local NGOs – have signed the Call so far. 

The Call will be conveyed to the President of the UN General Assembly to inform the deliberations of the Special Session of the General Assembly of the United Nations.