We are the Most Unprepared Country in the World for Large-Scale Medical Emergencies

We are the Most Unprepared Country in the World for Large-Scale Medical Emergencies

The richest county in the world, the country that has the most Nobel Laureates and the most advanced health care services is also, as we just witnessed, the most unprepared to handle medical emergencies.

The day the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the COVID-19 pandemic, the President of the United States first met with the leaders of the country’s financial institutions, major banks. This emergency is about people not about money. We know that the US Treasury never runs out of money. It prints its own money as it pleases. The problem is a fast spreading pandemic the banks cannot treat or cure.

The United States has oil reserve and grain reserve but does not have emergency medical supplies including protective garments on reserve. For a country that prides itself as the leader of the market economy, we rely heavily on CDC, a government agency, to produce all testing kits. CDC’s manufacturing plants are not enough and, therefore, CDC must also be prepared to inspect the production of testing kits by the private sector. This simple procedure will solve the current problems.

But it is now clear that the United States does not have essential medicines on reserve and does not even produce its own medicines. For example, approximately 75% of antibiotics used in the United States are produced in China. Do we even have inspectors checking those factories? We only inspect factories within the United State but what kind of loopholes allows medicines produced elsewhere to go into use without inspections? For this, the entire government is at fault. We the people are also at fault because we should have demanded proper security for all imported consumables including medicines. When we came together we stopped TPP that would have allowed 11 countries to produce our medicines without proper inspections.

The time has come for us to demand:
Our government uses the private sector produced approved testing kits for COVID-19.
Create reserve for emergency supplies that also includes protective gears.
Establish proper inspections at the locations where our medicines are produced.

This petition highlights the following:
While testing kits are commodities, human beings are not.
While the medicines themselves are commodities diseases are not.
Most importantly, we cannot establish emergency procedures during the emergencies. We have to have a robust emergency preparedness on the shelf ready to be used in time of emergency. Congress should not discuss what to do in time of emergency; the country must have a fully-fledged prepared emergency mitigation methods. The time to discuss emergency plans was before the emergency, not during as we are doing now and certainly not after because it will be too late.

This petition was forwarded to Dr. Antony Fauci, NIH; Dr. Robert R. Redfield, CDC; Governors; Congress and the White House. Please sign and distribute this petition widely. It is a matter of life and death.

Enku Kebede-Francis, PhD, MS, MEd
Wellesley, Massachusetts