Until very recently, globalization was not seriously questioned in the circles of supranational power. The pandemic was a very important wake-up call as one country after another closed down, showing little willingness to risk their health security in free mobility in the world. Precisely, when the pandemic subsided, the war broke out in Ukraine, putting food security at risk, particularly in European countries, a phenomenon that is transferred to those with less capacity to absorb the frequently speculative increase in prices.
These two phenomena highlight that globalization has winners and losers that tend to be the same, regardless of the specific issue at hand. This fact was reflected in the debates at the World Economic Forum in Davos, where the obscene enrichment of very few and the devastating impact on the global economy and falling economic growth rates were discussed. Even the promoters of globalization, such as the International Monetary Fund, called for sanity, under penalty of causing a deep world recession.
The 75th Assembly of the World Health Organization, at the end of May, was the occasion to rethink the functioning of this organization. It was evident that it has not fulfilled its role as global health regulator and guarantor of the fight against the pandemic, despite its obligations in this field. The ineffectiveness of international health regulations had also been clearly demonstrated.
Excess mortality began to be measured as an expression of the size of the surplus of deaths in relation to years prior to the pandemic. It was originally interpreted as an indirect way of estimating SARS-CoV-2 deaths without laboratory diagnosis. However, it was soon discovered that it was also the result of excess mortality from chronic-degenerative diseases in people not infected by covid-19. Another expression of the devastation caused by the pandemic is that life expectancy, an indicator of the health of a population, has fallen in practically all the countries where it has been measured, and in this case, Mexico is no exception. The loss of years of life expectancy in Mexico is more important for men than women, since in the states it reached up to three years in 70 percent for men and 30 percent for women, according to studies by El Colegio de México.
The pandemic quickly became a major political issue in countries where right-wing political forces assumed Malthusian positions while progressive governments proposed policies to protect the population over the economic interests of large companies. Although at the beginning of the pandemic the big pharmaceutical companies raised the possibility of selling the vaccines at a price close to the cost of production, this has not been the case. The sales of the main companies have increased like never before (https://elpais.com/economia/2021-12-20/las-pharmaceuticals-close-a-golden-year-with-65,000-million-boxes-before-the-challenge-of-the- omicron.html), and even more so in the stock markets. This indicates that the expectation of investors is that vaccines and possible antiviral drugs will be sold at maximum profit.
It is in this context that the positions of the WHO were ineffective, which must be analyzed in light of the precarious financing of the intergovernmental organization, which depends mainly on the World Bank and foundations of large companies, such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. . This financing is linked to specific projects and not channeled according to the priorities set by the agency.
Governments should be charged with protecting their citizens. Therefore, they must decide in which fields national sovereignty must be built and defended. The pandemic and its consequences on population health tell us that medicines and vaccines have to be considered a matter of sovereignty and that this has to be built from production and distribution to build effective chains and armored against corruption. Mexico had a solid pharmaceutical industry that was dismantled, which indicates that with a clear vision of where to move forward under clear rules, we could as a country (re)build health sovereignty.
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