Equitable Recovery from COVID-19: Bring Global Commitments to Community Level

One after the other, high-level speakers at the 2020 United Nations General Assembly (UNGASS) on COVID-19 pointed to growing inequalities and stresses to health, social, economic and democratic systems caused by the pandemic, calling for comprehensive, collective interest driven responses. They called for a sustainable recovery to include: debt relief and international financing; ensuring food security; universal access to vaccines, diagnostics and medicines for COVID-19 as global public goods; military ceasefires to reach populations in conflict areas; and halting ecological determinants of zoonotic pandemics.

These issues will be on international agendas into 2021 and beyond. However, global commitments must translate into benefit for local communities for any recovery to tackle the inequalities and conditions that made society vulnerable to COVID-19, particularly for those experiencing its worst impact.

In this commentary, we examine how COVID-19 has impacted on family and child health and well-being (FCHW) and the implications for a bottom-up recovery. We propose significant investment in universal, public sector, community-driven health and social protection systems to connect measures called for globally with those needed to ensure equitable recovery within communities.