We knew a healthcare crisis was looming. But this wasn’t the crisis we were expecting. Until Covid-19 began its inexorable global spread, the greatest threat to the world’s healthcare systems seemed to be the rise of noncommunicable diseases, combined with an ageing population. We knew that these conditions were already responsible for 70% of global deaths and that the worst was yet to come. We knew too that the risk of epidemics and pandemics had increased with globalization, urbanization and climate change, and that growing antimicrobial resistance could plunge us back into a terrifying pre-antibiotic era. None of these other challenges has gone away – the pandemic has only lengthened waiting lists as it delayed testing and treatments and brought a whole new set of chronic conditions.
So where does this leave the world’s already struggling healthcare systems?
Between September and December 2020, I wrote a seven-part thought leadership series for WSP on rethinking healthcare for a pandemic age, speaking to more than 40 experts around the world. The articles spanned the human and the technical, from the gulf between perceptions and the reality of hospital safety, to the economics of building them to cope with things that may never happen, to what went wrong with global supply chains, to what lockdowns revealed about cities and the social determinants of health.
Each piece was published on WSP’s Insights page as part of its Better Normal campaign and promoted on social media. Then the whole series was combined into a 59-page PDF, as well as being translated into French.
Graphics by Sam Jenkins at Supermassive Creative; production editing by my partner Nick Jones at Wordmule.
