The True Challenges of the Covid-19 Epidemics: The Need for Essential Levels of Care for All

In the last decades, biomedical research and funding supporting it have given a relevant impulse to developing so-called “Personalized Medicine” (PM) and “precision medicine” (the latter definition with emphasis on the usefulness of dividing patients into target groups). This perspective has increased knowledge on how we can predict disease susceptibility and prognosis in a person or how we can define a tailor-made treatment on specific individual immune-genomic characteristics and disease and thus improve the health of such a person [1]. All this represents an exhilarating challenge that has led to the discovery of treatments of unimaginable efficacy up to a few years ago. However, this recent advance in research seems to have had a price. In most countries, care of excellence is only for those who can afford it, but even in countries with strong national health systems, the commitment to individualized care may have diverted resources and attention from creating systems that guarantee protection for all. A health system that ensures well-being for all should not be in contradiction but rather complementary to medicine that tends to individualize treatments of excellence. Nevertheless, it is undeniable that the attention of researchers in recent years has not focused on public health and the sustainability of everyone's well-being.