The Impact of COVID-19 on Global Health

Lessons from the pandemic highlight that we need to rethink preparing and managing global health risks and we need to invest in making health systems more capable to handle these threats when they do emerge.

The COVID-19 pandemic has had massive global impacts infecting more than 3.5 billion and causing more than 15 million excess deaths. The virus has directly killed millions and the lockdowns needed to dampen transmission may have contributed in various ways to millions of pandemic related deaths not due to SARS Cov2 infection. The COVID-19 pandemic has not only been a major shock to human health but has had unprecedented economic impacts. The distribution of health and economic effects has not been even around the world. Countries judged prior to the pandemic to be better prepared to manage threats such as the United Kingdom and Unites States have not faired particularly well during 2020 and 2021. 

Meet our speaker and chair

Christopher Murray is the Director of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation and Professor and Chair of Health Metrics Sciences at the University of Washington. A physician and health economist, he previously served as Executive Director, Evidence and Information for Policy Cluster at the World Health Organization, Director of Harvard Initiative for Global Health and Center for Population and Development Studies, and as Professor of Public Policy at the Harvard School of Public Health.

Alistair McGuire is Head of Department and Chair of Health Economics in the Department of Health Policy at LSE. His research interests cover all topics in health economics, including international comparisons, economics of the hospital, public/private sector interface and cost-effectiveness analysis of health technologies.

More about this event

The Department of Health Policy (@LSEHealthPolicy) trains and inspires people passionate about health by advancing and challenging their understanding of health systems and the social, economic and political contexts in which they operate.

This event forms part of LSE’s Shaping the Post-COVID World initiative, a series imagining what the world could look like after the crisis, and how we get there.

Twitter Hashtag for this event: #LSEHealthPolicy