NEW DELHI: An article in Lancet has questioned global health rankings pointing out that the country that ranked at the top of Global Health Security Index 2019, the US, has tackled the Covid-19 pandemic worst while lower ranked South Korea (9th), China (51st) and other Asian countries have done better in providing effective and often innovative responses.The global health security (GHS) index is an assessment of 195 countries’ capacity to face infectious disease outbreaks. The UK had ranked second in the index. The article by Sarah Dalglish of the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health pointed out that the US and UK governments have provided among the world's worst responses to the pandemic with neither widespread testing available, nor treatment and robust contact tracing, as strongly recommended by the WHO. It added that health workers in these two countries have neither adequate access to personal protective equipment nor are there nearly enough hospital beds to accommodate the onslaught of patients.In contrast, Asian countries, including China, South Korea, Singapore and Taiwan, were hailed for providing “rapid, effective and often innovative responses” probably due to their recent experience with outbreaks of Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) in 2015 and the 2002–03 severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) epidemic.While the US might have crippled the ability of countries such as Venezuela , Cuba and Iran to respond by continuing to block medical supplies and humanitarian aid, China has been dispatching experts, masks and other supplies to Italy and other affected countries and even Cuba sent its doctors to help other countries, pointed out the article.It cited a recent survey which showed that 85% of global organisations working in health have headquarters in Europe and North America; two-thirds are headquartered in Switzerland , the UK, and the US. More than 80% of global health leaders are nationals of high-income countries, and half are nationals of the UK and the US, the survey had found. This dominance of these countries in global health organisations, according to Dalglish, could be the reason why preparedness was gauged the way it was in the GHS index.The global health security index is compiled by the US-based Nuclear Threat Initiative, the Johns Hopkins Centre for Health Security and the Economist Intelligence Unit with funding from various philanthropies including the Gates Foundation. “Covid-19 is giving the lie to prevailing notions of expertise and solidarity” said the article, adding that the pandemic has given the lie to the notion that expertise is concentrated in, or at least best channelled by, legacy powers and historically rich states.