What we could be doing together, as people, is to unify with one single ambition to fight the next pandemic. It is of utmost importance that we invest in public health, which means the government needs to set aside adequate resources. We should start massive awareness campaigns on the importance of prevention of diseases

What COVID-19 has done is like the rain which has fallen upon a roof, and on that roof, we have figured out where the leaks are. And what is clear is that the rain came down on a very leaky roof. It has challenged politics, science, leadership, medicine and humanity. A pandemic of this scale that mirrors the flu pandemic of 1918- 1920 was, perhaps, unthinkable, given the advances the world has made in technology, medicine and engineering.

So when the United Nations together with the member states came up with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), there was a reason we had the first five goals in place, which were really the unfinished business of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

They are Goal number 1: Ending Poverty; Goal number 2: Ending hunger; Goal number 3: Ensuring universal health coverage (UHC); Goal number 4: Quality education; and Goal number 5: Gender equality.

What has now become absolutely clear is that without SDG 3, or ensuring universal health coverage, we will not be making much human progress. We are seeing an economic crisis, which rivals the great economic depression of the 1930s.

The World Food Programme has talked about close to 280 million people marching towards hunger by the end of this year. If you recall the famous words of Mahatma Gandhi, "it is health that is the real wealth and not pieces of gold and silver". Therefore, health becomes the very foundation around which both society and humanity can progress.

Universal health coverage really means universal health coverage; it is as strong as the weakest link.

So if there is one country, one community or one area that is left behind, and there comes a pandemic or a virus emerges from there, nobody is immune from it, as COVID-19 has shown.

As UN Secretary-General António Guterres said, "COVID-19 is not just a health emergency, it is a humanitarian emergency and a development emergency".

The coronavirus pandemic has laid bare in front of us and showed just how unequal we are. Perhaps a lot of it fell on the periphery of our consciousness, even in the most advanced countries of the world where you thought their health system was flawless, but it showed it was not. It was not strong, and it was not robust enough to keep the virus at bay.

This has shown us that we need to be much better prepared. We need to partner with countries and across humanity to deal with it because this won't be the last pandemic.

There are many viruses out there, and as a fact, as the human population keeps expanding in massive numbers, we have encroached upon the ecological space of animals, and the consequence of this is a jump in zoonotic diseases, or a transfer of viruses from animals to humans.

What we can do is perhaps prevent the scale with which we are being confronted today.

The important aspect here is to go for multilateralism, because without a multi-lateral approach, we will not be able to resist the threat when the next pandemic strikes.

And the next pandemic can come from anywhere, just as the flu pandemic came from the West and COVID-19 from the east. It is difficult to predict from where it will come.

We need to prepare for the next pandemic together, and perhaps this is the reason universal health coverage has now become the very anchor around which we will succeed with the rest of the SDGs.

It has shown our fragility as people in the face of an invisible virus. It has put us into lockdowns, hit our economies while large numbers of people are falling into poverty with each passing day, and it has not spared anybody, rich or poor, strong or weak.

What we could be doing together, as people, is to unify with one single ambition to fight the next pandemic.

We need to focus on a few things.

It is of utmost importance that we invest in public health, which means the government needs to set aside adequate resources.

We should start massive awareness campaigns on the importance of prevention of diseases.

What COVID-19 has done is changed our behaviour in a duration of four to seven months. We are washing our hands, wearing masks, sanitising our hands, maintaining safe physical distancing, and we are observing respiratory etiquette.

What if we were to make this a real habit? What if we look more into non-communicable diseases? Because we have seen what COVID-19 has done, it has killed a large number of people with comorbidities and has added to the number of mortality that we had.

It is very clear that the new heroes in the entire ecosystem are the health workers, who have shown spectacular bravery and courage in advancing human health and humanity, and their contribution needs to be recognised because this is the talent that needs to be nurtured.

We will need them for not only preventive work but also for future pandemics.

Also it is of utmost importance that we look through the public policy lens, which means a robust insurance system needs to be in place.

We have to find robust social safety nets for people who don't have the resources, we need to invest in making sure everyone has access to quality health care.

This is an opportunity to look at the entire health chain, which means we need collaborations across countries and economies.

What is more important is that without universal health coverage, we have laid bare the vulnerabilities of humanity, and humanity has to be underpinning our drive, our purpose of fullness as a society if we are to progress.

Undoubtedly, universal health coverage and our ability to harness public private partnership to advance good health care access for all will form the bases for the success of the SDGs in the next ten years as we race towards that objective.

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A version of this article appears in the print on February 5, 2021, of The Himalayan Times.