Readiness of the health system against COVID-19 and its impact on
economy and foreign trade in MENA
Abstract
Objectives This study aims to investigate the
readiness and resilience of health system against COVID-19 and the
impact of the pandemic on economy and foreign trade in the Middle East
and North Africa (MENA) region with Turkey. Methods
By descriptive analysis, we evaluated the readiness and resilience
of the health system and the impact of the pandemic on economy and
foreign trade in the MENA region with Turkey. We tested the normality of
the indicators by Jarque-Bera (JB), Shapiro-Wilk (SW) and
Kolmogorov-Smirnov (KS) tests. We ranked the countries by min-max
standardization method. Results As of the end of
July 2021, the number of COVID-19 related cases was more than 12.4
million in MENA and 5.7 million in Turkey and deaths were more than 212
thousand in MENA and 51 thousand in Turkey. After the analysis in
order, we have found Israel, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Turkey
and Qatar as the most resilient countries and Yemen, Syria, Palestine,
Iraq and Libya as the most vulnerable countries against pandemic.
Conclusion The pandemic has affected the life and
the economies in the region negatively and the health system for some of
them was not sufficient to fight with it.
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