H5N1 Flu and Good Governance In, Through, and From Healthcare

The public health community is watching the trajectory of the H5N1 Bird Flu intensely. So far, the flu is present worldwide in birds, affecting the poultry and U.S. dairy cow populations. There have been 2 confirmed human cases in the United States: 1 from cows and 1 from poultry. The wake of the COVID-19 pandemic has put the healthcare industry and world at large in a state of hypervigilance in addition to the collective trauma of a pandemic that was wrought with poor management and institutional responses.

The world of public health is not limited to the healthcare industry as the public recognizes it – hospitals, medical providers, big pharma, biotech, and life sciences. Every sector contributes to public health, from media promoting dangerous lifestyles and facilitating disinformation campaigns to petrochemicals used on farms that taint the food supply. Good governance is not limited to the literal institution of government on a local, national, or international scale. Good governance is a conscious endeavor all organizations should take into consideration.

Examples of how your organization can impact public health in alignment with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals are below:

SDG 3 - Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages

Target 3.4 By 2030, reduce by one third premature mortality from non-communicable diseases through prevention and treatment and promote mental health and well-being

Indicators

3.4.1 Mortality rate attributed to cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes, or chronic respiratory disease

3.4.2 Suicide mortality rate

Intentional practice: What products, content, or services are you serving up to humanity? Are you facilitating sextortion schemes for the sake of being a successful content platform? Are you creating a new dietary supplement that hasn’t gone through trials and ultimately causes side effects that lead to cardiovascular disease? You are developing a new viral recipe to keep your restaurant afloat at the expense of allowing the public to make conscious choices about their health? To successfully command funding with the least resistance in this day and age, you need to develop products and solutions that solve humanity’s problems, not exacerbate them.

Target 3.8 Achieve universal health coverage, including financial risk protection, access to quality essential health-care services and access to safe, effective, quality and affordable essential medicines and vaccines for all

Indicators

3.8.1 Coverage of essential health services

3.8.2 Proportion of population with large household expenditures on health as a share of total household expenditure or income

Intentional practice: Are you a fintech company? Looking to get into blockchain and crypto? Creating new ways to pay for the rising cost of healthcare requires a new way of thinking about healthcare finance. Create a startup that addresses this challenge, which will require a complex business model and can bring in income without robbing the consumer under the delusion that healthcare is a privilege. Change your philosophy and solve for public health while developing an optimized human population. Who can you partner with to build a healthcare ecosystem that accepts hybrid standard and cryptocurrency payments? Create a crypto token that allows for every crypto transaction to be translated into reportable financial statements while allowing the internal blockchain finance structure to operate on a sliding scale according to wallets. Create a team that exclusively focuses on evaluating a person’s real time financial stance and purchases crypto to receive services.

Target 3.b Support the research and development of vaccines and medicines for the communicable and non-communicable diseases that primarily affect developing countries, provide access to affordable essential medicines and vaccines, in accordance with the Doha Declaration on the TRIPS Agreement and Public Health, which affirms the right of developing countries to use to the full the provisions in the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights regarding flexibilities to protect public health, and, in particular, provide access to medicines for all

Indicators

3.b.1 Proportion of the target population covered by all vaccines included in their national programme

3.b.2 Total net official development assistance to medical research and basic health sectors

3.b.3 Proportion of health facilities that have a core set of relevant essential medicines available and affordable on a sustainable basis

Intentional practice: Proactive vaccine R&D is key without the need to develop bioweapons. The development of vaccines must incorporate, revere, and publish through risk assessments for accountability purposes. To prevent and treat future illnesses, accountability, and ethics are paramount. If you don’t want more government regulation of your industry, let go of capitalizing on crises and be proactive about preventing crises. Be the hero everyone needs, even when people don’t think they need one.

Every problem has a solution. Be the solution to humanity’s problems!

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