2023年8月6日，在西雅图会议中心举行的亚太经济合作组织（APEC）卫生与经济部长级会议期间，西雅图中文电台记者小元和卢昱志独家采访了美国卫生与公共服务部部长Xavier Becerra。
Becerra部长强调，亚太经济合作组织面临的卫生相关的经济挑战不仅是一个经济体的问题，而是所有成员都需要共同面对和应对的问题。疫情的爆发凸显了我们必须共同防备，高效应对的重要性。他也强调，只有当每个人都安全时，我们才能真正安全。因此，像APEC这样的论坛至关重要，因为这让我们能够共聚一堂，讨论如何协作，预备应对，以及防止未来的健康危机。尽管我们生活在一个大世界中，但最终，我们是一个大家庭。
谈及从新冠疫情中学习到的经验，Becerra部长认为，我们的准备工作和协调工作都不足。他强调，无论是否拥有制作疫苗的材料或技术，如果不进行共享，都无法给我们带来好处。他提醒我们，我们不能单独行动，不能期待我们能够独自保护我们的人民和健康。我们不是孤立的，合作对我们有所帮助。目前，世界社会正在做出一致努力，通过世界卫生组织以及其他各种论坛和合作机制，力图达成如何应对未来大流行病的全球协议。
卢昱志记者问及卫生领域的包容性如何作为经济增长的重要部分，以及APEC成员经济体如何共同工作，确保所有社会群体能够充分参与并从全球化竞争经济中受益。对此，Becerra部长表示，他们认识到，如果能够共同努力，改善人民的健康状况，就能改善经济的健康状况。他们坚信，改善健康的最有效途径之一就是专注于实现全民健康覆盖，以免使部分人口落后。并且，为了实现真正的全民健康覆盖，必须大力关注初级保健服务，即早期照护和预防性照护。他相信，许多参加APEC的经济体将共同努力，不仅在全民健康覆盖的问题上进行合作，以预备和应对大流行病，而且还将深入关注为人口提供初级保健服务。
To Prevent Future Health Threats, All APEC Economies Are On The Same Boat
— Exclusive Interview with Xavier Becerra, Secretary of HHS
(Xiaoyuan Su, Yuzhi Lu)
Xiaoyuan: What are some key health-related economic challenges that APEC economies are facing, and how is the US planning to collaborate with them to address these issues?
Xavier: There are many, and I don’t believe that the most important ones are outside of the scope of every country. Let me state that again by saying the types of challenges, we all of the economies of APEC face transcend any one particular economy. As the pandemic showed, there are issues that we must all confront, prepare, how to respond effectively having the medical countermeasures that you need work together, because we know that while I may have a vaccine and I may protect myself, if you don’t, then I’m still not safe, so no one is safe until everyone is safe.
So the value of forum, like this one of APEC is that we gather together to discuss how to work together in collaboration. We can be prepared, respond, and deal with preventing any future pandemics, any future crisis on the health care site. So it is important that we come together, because while we’re a big world at the end of the day, we’re one big family. Thank you.
Xiaoyuan: What are the lessons that we can learn from the COVID-19 pandemic to better prepare for future health threats?
Xavier: We learned that we’re not as prepared as we need to be. We learned that we’re not as coordinated as we need to be. And we learned that some things, some of us have, many things others don’t have, and it does not help. I may have the materials to make vaccines. You may have the technology to make them, but if we don’t share that, neither of us benefits, we learned from Covid that we cannot act independently. We cannot act like we can preserve and protect our people and our health by ourselves. We’re not in silence. And it helps when we work together.
And so right now, the world community, whether through the World Health Organization, through the various forum and collaborations, we’re seeing a concerted effort to actually reach a global accord on how we deal with future pandemic, which is fabulous and not just the approach, but also the financing, because we know that all of these things take money and it is tough that it took Covid-19 pandemic to get us to work more closely together and more rapidly, but we’ll take it because that’s what we need.
Yuzhi: Inclusivity in healthcare is emphasized as an important aspect of economic growth. How can APEC member economies work together to ensure that all segments of society can fully participate in and benefit from a competitive globalized economy?
Xavier: We recognize and one of the things that the economies here at APEC discussed was how if we work together, if we improve health for our people, we improve the health of our economies. We all seem to grieve very strongly that perhaps one of the most important ways to improve health is to focus on having universal health coverage so that you don’t leave some parts of your population behind. And that for universal health coverage to be real, you have to focus quite a bit on primary care services. That means early care, preventative care. I believe you’re gonna see a concerted effort on the part of many of the economies that were part of APEC to come together, to work not only on universal health coverage as a way to prepare for and address pandemics, but also with a deep focus on providing primary care services for populations.
【本文作者：苏小元、卢昱志】
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