A FORMER EXECUTIVE director in the World Health Organisation (WHO) has said Ireland shouldn’t “play the next pandemic like the last one”.

Sligo-born Dr Michael J Ryan led WHO’s emergencies programme at the time.

Speaking at a roundtable as part of Ireland’s Covid-19 Evaluation Panel, Ryan said “we didn’t trust communities enough” to manage their own risk.

He said he could “understand why” that approach was taken as “health systems were coming under huge pressure”, but said “there’s no democracy in that”.

The panel was set up to examine the planning for and handling of the pandemic in Ireland.

It aims to identify lessons which can be learned about the performance of the health and social care system, the government’s response to risks and will make recommendations to help prepare for future crises, but will not apportion blame.

Ryan, who also served as the WHO’s deputy director general, said the pandemic “didn’t cause the lack of trust in the system”, but “we really hit the ball out of the park when it comes to that and that’s something public health authorities nationally and internationally need to examine”.

It is very important that we don’t play the next pandemic like the last one.

Ryan said while scientific communities are “good” at dealing with rapidly changing advice based on new research, societies “take time to catch up” and communication about changing advice managed to “turn a trust pothole into a trust chasm”.

He said, in future, communities need to be “empowered” and “trusted” adding that he feared pandemic preparedness in the future would be too technologically focused.

“Unless we start to invest in community and participatory public health and have communities ready for the next pandemic, we’re going to fail, not because of the technological and the innovation solutions, but we have not prepared, supported and involved our communities in preparing for the next pandemic.”

The panel heard how the initial global reaction to the pandemic was characterised by “confusion and blame”.