Established trust key to pandemic preparedness: Study

As Australians reflect on their life post-COVID, public health experts say building trust and prioritising help for vulnerable communities is key to the country rebuilding and preparing for a future pandemic.
 
In a new Burnet Institute study, researchers explored how Australia can best respond to future pandemics, saying planning should focus on rebuilding trust, social cohesion and the ‘social contract between the Government and the people it serves’.
 
They said restoring trust in governments and science is now critical to pandemic preparedness.
 
One of the study’s lead authors, Professor Margaret Hellard, said that during the pandemic, better support was needed to ‘counterbalance the inequities faced by minority communities’.
 
‘We need to ensure structures are in place to lessen the impacts of future pandemics on culturally and linguistically diverse communities and other priority groups who are most at risk of infection,’ she said.
 
Professor Hellard added that these communities are also most likely to be adversely impacted by the consequences of public health restrictions put in place to prevent the spread of infection.
 
Melbourne-based GP Dr Mukesh Haikerwal led one of Victoria’s respiratory clinics throughout the pandemic and remains passionate about the role of GPs in formal pandemic preparedness and emergency responses.
 
In response to the Burnet Institute’s study, he said it remains important to highlight the inequities brought about by COVID-19.
 
‘It’s important to mention the higher rates of morbidity and mortality in certain groups,’ Dr Haikerwal told newsGP.
 
‘We advocated in Victoria for some more specific support for groups that were suffering because of lack of information.’
 
Established trust and community connectedness mean GPs play a key role in supporting patients and upholding public health measures during emergency responses, such as the COVID-19 pandemic.
 
Last year, an independent COVID-19 Response Inquiry found Australia’s response and preparation to the pandemic was inadequate and many frontline healthcare workers were negatively impacted.
 
Dr Haikerwal says GPs are well-equipped to support formal public health responses, such as through the partnerships forged with government public health teams during COVID-19 which saw GP involvement in many aspects of the response.
 
But he added that the work of GPs and their expertise across the pandemic was something the profession ‘struggled to get’.
                                                   
‘GPs were [initially] cut out of the whole equation to the detriment of the community, and it was only through very strong lobbying that we got to a higher level of engagement at the earlier levels of decision making,’ Dr Haikerwal said.
 
‘I was lucky, I was part of the GP respiratory clinic process.
 
‘It meant we actually got better access for GPs with the skills that they had to be able to do things.’
 
Reflecting on his key takeaways from the pandemic, Dr Haikerwal spoke of the benefits of working alongside local communities and across jurisdictions, including across state borders and the federal-state divide.
 
‘Having the State Government working with local governments, so we could actually design our responses together with local people who understood the communities better,’ he said.
 
Dr Haikerwal added that the lessons learnt from COVID-19 should not be forgotten, but he fears pressures such as cost-of-living issues are putting Australia at risk of discarding that knowledge.
 
‘We’ve forgotten all the benefits that we gained through the pain,’ he said.
 
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