Latin American bishops join forces in the fight against Covid-19

By James Blears

Chancellor of the Pontifical Academy for Life, Archbishop Renzo Pegoraro is leading the call for a combined skillset initiative to birth a beacon of hope and help for all of Latin America and the Caribbean, which is suffering so grievously from the ravages of Covid 19. He did this during a meeting organized by the Conference. The avowed aim is to establish an all-enveloping and all-inclusive health umbrella, to deflect and defeat the reign of the pandemic.

A new force

This will involve containment plus development measures, specifically focusing on public health policies, the family and the economy. Monsignor Pegoraro praised the work of the entire Church in Latin America involving public health and the common good, which will now be channelled into this new force, bringing forth a wind of change.

Vital tasks of the Working Group will involve the prompt and coordinated exchange of expertise and knowledge, via the flow of information, reinforced by justice and full equality. 

This embraces treatment strategies with medicines and vaccine development, in the immediate and short term. While in the medium term, understanding and intelligent adaptation dovetailing into the particular health system characteristics and needs of each nation.

Wider access to care

So there can be a wider scope of access to care, irrespective of either social or economic discrimination of any kind. Looking into and carefully considering the long term future with all its implications, there must be a humane approach towards economic parity, with the fair distribution of resources to achieve justice for all, even in the most remote and inaccessible pockets of population.

Only in this way can the pools and reservoirs of skills, energy and expertise, which already glimmeringly exit, be best employed and significantly boosted, to shed an even brighter shining light on all.