Answer extracted from the Beyond the Deck podcast — listen to the full episode below.
How prepared are we for the next pandemic, and what lessons did COVID reveal about healthcare system weaknesses?
Another major pandemic is very likely to occur. COVID exposed deep tears and cracks in public health and healthcare systems that remain unresolved, even as institutional improvements take root across the GCC. However, from a population behavioral perspective, we are fundamentally unprepared—less than five years after COVID, the collective focus on hygiene, masks, and shared responsibility has evaporated, and societies have largely reverted to pre-pandemic habits.
Institutional learning versus behavioral amnesia
Governments across the GCC have moved faster than populations in absorbing COVID's lessons. Countries like Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Qatar have established CDC-equivalent entities and reinforced public health governance structures—the Saudi Public Health Authority, GCC Council coordination mechanisms, and similar agencies—that did not exist or were significantly weaker before 2020. These institutional reforms represent real progress in outbreak detection, response coordination, and medicine supply chains.
Yet institutional preparedness divorced from population readiness creates a critical vulnerability. As Elsy Dumit discusses in the episode, the behavioral collapse is stark: the vigilance, sanitization routines, mask adherence, and sense of collective responsibility that defined 2020 and 2021 have nearly vanished. People have returned to old patterns, and without that population-level discipline, even well-equipped health systems face upstream failure.
"Climate change for us in public health is probably one of the biggest threats to public health."
Elsy Dumit — Principal in Healthcare and Life Science Practice at Rollenberger. A public health strategist with a Master's degree from Johns Hopkins University and previous leadership at PAHO (Pan American Health Organization), where she directed emergency preparedness and pandemic response across the Americas. Her work spans GCC governments, leading healthcare institutions, and the pharma and biotechnology sectors, focusing on building systems resilient to both known and emerging threats.
A deeper layer of the pandemic gap lies in what COVID failed to shift: the underlying burden of non-communicable diseases dominates GCC health profiles. While infectious disease preparedness captured headlines, diabetes, chronic kidney disease, ischemic heart disease, hypertension, and obesity remain the region's top five disease burdens—chronic conditions that demand sustained prevention, behavior change, and system investment regardless of pandemic cycles. COVID's disruption was visible and acute; these endemic crises are silent and chronic.
The question of readiness, then, is not binary. The conversation with Dumit explores why institutional reforms alone cannot substitute for cultural and behavioral shifts—and why the window to rebuild public health literacy before the next outbreak closes quickly. Forgetting is fast; rebuilding is slow.
See also
What does resilience in healthcare systems specifically mean beyond general preparedness?
Resilience in healthcare has multiple dimensions. Health security involves protection of the population against unforeseen or uncontrolled disease spread, and it requires active governance, coordinated response mechanisms, and trust in institutions.
What role does health financing reform play in building resilient healthcare systems in the GCC?
Traditionally in the GCC, government serves as the payer, provider, and regulator of healthcare, creating a situation where populations do not act as conscious consumers or participants in their own care pathways.
How does climate change present emerging health threats in arid regions like the GCC?
Climate change is one of the biggest threats to public health in the region. In arid climates with desert regions and without consistent access to fresh water, disease vectors expand their geographic range, carrying infections far beyond their historical boundaries.