Building resilient health systems in Africa beyond the COVID-19 pandemic response
Fragility is the insufficient capacity of the state, system and/ or communities to manage, absorb or mitigate risks. Resilience is what happens when a health system adapts to shocks or stress in a context of robustness. Health system resilience has been defined as the ability of health actors, institutions and populations to demonstrate absorptive, adaptive, accessible and transformative capacities to prepare for and effectively respond to health system shocks and disturbances. Health system resilience is directly linked to health system governance —that is, resilience depends on the choices of groups and individuals as they make, change, monitor and enforce the rules (formal and informal) that govern the health system.