CRISIS BEGETS CRISIS — Well over two years into the pandemic, the biggest impacts of Covid-19 are just now coming to light — often not directly caused by the virus. Health organizations have measured the pandemic's effects on other health goals, including to stop tuberculosis, AIDS, malaria and other diseases, as well as to continue and increase routine childhood vaccinations. Even with the strictest Covid-19 measures now lifted, the results concern health leaders. "During the COVID-19 pandemic, total deaths worldwide increased by more than 15 million — and most of these were not just directly caused by the COVID-19 disease, but also by its indirect effects of disruptions to health care systems and local economies," Atul Gawande, USAID's assistant administrator for global health, told Global Pulse in a statement. "The result has been the first reduction in global life expectancy in more than a century." Years of slowing progress Routine childhood vaccinations declined dramatically through the pandemic, resulting in the lowest coverage in 30 years, according to a WHO and UNICEF report. Though many health experts expected backsliding in 2020, through extensive lockdowns and attention shifting to Covid-19, the decline in progress continued — though slowed — in 2021, a trend confirmed in a similar report from Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance. And it's not just routine vaccinations. A recent U.N. report, titled In Danger , outlined the slowing progress in HIV responses through the pandemic, including in Asia, which saw cases increase for the first time in a decade. Some disease responses were not affected as much as others, but the impacts have been felt broadly, especially in low-income countries. "At the outset of Covid, there was an acute fear in the malaria community that we'd lose 15 years of historic progress," Martin Edlund, CEO of Malaria No More, told Global Pulse. "We certainly avoided the worst-case scenario, but it is the fact that, for the first time in the 15-year history of (the President's Malaria Initiative), deaths and cases from malaria are on the rise." Not just low-income countries are affected. Diagnostic and therapeutic work in wealthier nations was stalled for many diseases, leading to fears that the pandemic could cause slowed or reversed progress in reducing cancer deaths in the coming years. Shifting the Covid response The new reports, warning global health progress could continue faltering without intervention, echo concerns of health workers on the ground around the world — several of whom have been wondering why Covid-19 response money isn't being put toward more urgent needs, your host reported in a new story this morning . And some resources for Covid-19 have already begun shifting to other needs, where it's allowed. The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria was a vehicle for Covid-19 responses, setting up a separate fund for the pandemic, which could be used to directly address the virus or its indirect effects. At the pandemic's start, countries used most of that funding for efforts directly related to Covid-19, Peter Sands, executive director of the Global Fund, told POLITICO. Now, though, countries have shifted to spend most of that money to address the pandemic's knock-on effects. "In many of the poorest countries in the world, the kind of unfinished pandemics of HIV, TB and malaria kill more people and are a greater burden on the communities than Covid-19," he said. "The world has a way … of focusing on whatever the new threat is — particularly a big one that poses a threat to people living in rich countries."
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