Good Health and Well Being: Achieving Sustainable Development Through Adaptive Public Healthcare Policies

Abstract

Sustainable Development Goal 3 has been designed to achieve good health and wellbeing at a global level. Central to that objective is the need to ensure populations around the world have access to quality healthcare services, both geographically and financially. Universal healthcare delivery is therefore essential to the world’s progress; disease anywhere in the world can threaten public health everywhere. This phenomenon was clearly seen during the recent Covid-19 pandemic. While in Pakistan, the pandemic’s impact has been relatively less disastrous in terms of human lives lost than in countries such as the UK, Italy and the US, it has revealed serious loopholes in the health sector and the domino impact poor health can have on other developmental sectors such as education, the labor market and the overall economy of a country. Moreover, the pandemic has revealed the inevitability of investing in a health system that is cross-sectoral and is based on rigorous data collection and analysis tools.