America's Global Leadership During Covid-19

Floor Speech

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Ms. OMAR. Madam Speaker, I rise today to join my colleagues from both sides of the aisle in recognizing the need for the United States to take clear, decisive leadership in a genuinely global collaboration to confront the threat COVID-19.

The threat of COVID-19 is truly global--the virus does not understand borders or nationalities. Until and unless the virus is contained everywhere on Earth, it is not truly contained anywhere. The United States leads whether through action or inaction. We have a responsibility both morally and to our own national security to coordinate an international response to COVID-19 that meets the enormous challenge it presents. It is a sad state of affairs that this White House has preferred transparently political international squabbles to the type of American leadership the world is counting on.

In Congress, we have been understandably focused on our districts and our constituents, who are facing job losses, evictions, and the closing of their small businesses. We have needed to ensure that our health care professionals have access to the equipment that they need, and that our constituents abroad could be safely returned home.

And as we know today that there is still much to do on the homefront, the threat of COVID-19 in the rest of the world is incredibly grave. The Central African Republic has three ventilators in the entire country. In Somalia, there are 15 ICU beds total. Millions of refugees who have already fled unspeakable brutality and violence now live in camps where social distancing is impossible, and there isn't clean water to wash their hands every time they've touched a potentially contaminated surface. In Yemen, where conflict has already decimated infrastructure and public health, the confirmed cases of COVID-19 cast yet another long shadow on a long-suffering population. From Gaza to Guatemala, and from Lagos to Lahore, the toll of this disease could reach levels still unthinkable.

It is also important that we remember that it is women who are on the front lines, making up 70% of global health workers. The United States must stand in solidarity with these women and other healthcare workers and be a global leader in ensuring there is funding so that they have supplies and infrastructure to do their jobs and the long-term support to address mental and physical health issues as a result of their response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Not only are women impacted as health workers by health systems being overwhelmed by the pandemic, but women and girls are also facing new and exacerbated barriers in access to services, particularly sexual and reproductive health and gender-based violence prevention and response services, services that are essential. Pre-existing barriers to essential health services are exacerbated as overwhelmed health systems shift their attention solely to COVID-19 response. Experience has shown us that access to sexual and reproductive health care is critical in a pandemic. During the Ebola crisis in Sierra Leone, reduced access to reproductive healthcare is estimated to have caused at least as many deaths as Ebola itself.

We must not turn our back on the world. We must put aside our grievances and work toward the common good, to find a common solution. This pandemic is clear, tragic evidence that the outlook that favors international cooperation over isolationism, institutions over improvisation, is not just more moral but safer. Just as the ravages of this terrible disease know no borders, neither must the cure. Our national interest and our moral duty are one and the same. Now is the time. It is clearer now than ever that our destinies are linked, and that we are all in this together.

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