Jubilee Post News & Views
Ashish Krishna
The outbreak of Corona virus has rung the alarm bell across the world. The global health architecture is going through a litmus test and yet it’s not certain how this outbreak is going to be tamed entirely. Various countries have banned the foreign nationals flying from Chinese territory to their land.
The idea of Beijing being the epicentre of the New World Order has taken a toll. WHO has already declared the global health emergency so as to fast track the response mechanism.
The worrying trend
What has been seen of late is that the spread of the outbreak has multiple reasons. The canton styled municipalities have shown inefficiency in arresting the outbreak. Irony is, Wuhan which hosted the Health Conclave days ago the outbreak did not see the catastrophe coming. Another potent reason is the unbridled wet market operating across China.
The weak regulatory framework with inefficient quarantine standards is another reason for the severity. Both in Coronavirus and SARS case, the vectors were animals. Almost two decades have passed since SARS episode but the Chinese healthcare architecture failed to foresee another major catastrophe coming.
But above all, the most disturbing trend has been the censorship and excessive control over media. Sadly, the whistleblower Dr. Li himself succumbed to the coronavirus and died. In absence of free and fair media, his voice got choked and the world failed to know things in advance which otherwise would have changed the entire course of damage control. Due to lack of information dissemination, the epidemic spread has been in multitudes and has taken numerous lives.
The Chinese official stats says that the mortality has been around 1500 so far. But global health experts doubt this claim and are of the view that numbers may be far from the actual cases. Moreover, prohibiting global media players, censorship and cover-ups have been a routine in China. Major chunk of information the world outside is getting is primarily due to the social media. A robust, free and fair media would have given Dr. Li a voice and thing could have been in much better shape vis-a-vis what is happening now.
Road Ahead
Chinese leadership should not shy away from letting the world know the ground realities. The pandemic is no more China-centric and has passed China’s boundary. Hence it’s an issue with global ramifications and demands global response which won’t be effective unless the prognosis is holistic.
The global community along with WHO should come up with a robust plan so as to minimise the damage from hereon. Increased synergy and inter-governmental cooperation can potentially limit the damage considerably and restore normalcy. But for that to happen, the information dissemination should be free and fair without any cover-ups.
