Health should be considered a global public good!

Governments have previously recognized the role of health as a crucial foreign-policy tool, including in the 2007 Oslo Ministerial Declaration by the foreign ministers of Brazil, France, Indonesia, Norway, Senegal, South Africa, and Thailand. But applying this idea has become increasingly difficult because of the global rise of far-right nationalism, which presents diplomats with the challenge of maintaining amicable relations with allies demonized by their own governments.
Impulsive foreign policies aimed at tackling COVID-19 - such as travel bans and the suspension of economic activities - are not only unsupported by scientific evidence, but also are likely to prove harmful in the long run. By contrast, soft power, or a country's ability to shape the preferences of others through persuasion and diplomacy, often is much more effective. In fact, three of the strategies likely to prove most effective in tackling COVID-19 (and future epidemics) will require governments and other actors to cooperate more closely, establish deep mutual trust, and develop platforms that promote the free dissemination of evidence-based scientific data.

For starters, health should be considered a global public good. Countries with robust systems for collecting and disseminating scientific research should establish collaborative networks through which low- and middle-income countries can report and publish information on infectious outbreaks. Fortunately, leading international medical journals, including The Lancet and The New England Journal of Medicine, are collecting - and rapidly publishing - evidence-based, peer-reviewed data on COVID-19's clinical and public-health characteristics. This is critical, because the new coronavirus has not been the only epidemic to spread globally in recent weeks; there also is an epidemic of misinformation online, especially on social media platforms. - Junaid Nabi is a public-health researcher at Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston.

- Project Syndicate