Rather than spending tens of millions on a backward-looking, legalistic royal commission into Australia’s pandemic performance, a collaborative effort that starts now will better improve the country’s preparedness for future outbreaks, says public health innovator, Associate Professor, Craig Dalton.
“Australia’s public health response should be recast more like a combat agency, such as a fire brigade or an armed service, with a standing workforce and a reserve capacity,” says professor Dalton. “Every outbreak is a lesson in prevention and holds a massive amount of learning. It’s important to collate these to improve performance over time. Recent lessons from the 2009 influenza pandemic were lost in the decade leading up to this pandemic.″of 14 previous infectious disease outbreaks in the country from 2006 to 2020. It found key challenges in past outbreaks were similar to current ones.
“Lessons from the pandemic hold an intellectual capital value in the tens of billions of dollars. After multiple waves, we know rapid responses can prevent weeks or months of lockdown. With savings estimated between $450 million and $4 billion, per week of lockdown prevented, emergency public health response capacity is both a health and economic investment.
“We need to capture insights into what has gone well, what can be improved, and what can be done to mitigate the next pandemic. Unfortunately, most of those who could distil these learnings are still working around the clock.“There’s a great tradition in clinical medicine, of monthly morbidity and mortality meetings, where experts analyse all the deaths or severe diseases, and collect lessons learned. This clinical quality assurance process is much less developed in public health.
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