Community pantries: their role in public health during the Covid-19 pandemic

Dear Editor

In the recent editorial, reflections and issues on Covid-19 were discussed.¹ The problems of corruption and poor planning resulted in reducing public services and slash of community assets. These are assistance that should be given to the most vulnerable population in our society. With the prolongation of the Covid-19 pandemic and the incompetence of some government agencies, people’s well-being is greatly affected.

In many developing countries, a handful of workers lose their jobs and struggle to provide necessities for themselves and their families. Serving the community requires quality standards. It needs to provide high-quality service provision and monitoring progress towards achieving quality care for the people.² Since support from the government is scarce, many look for other alternatives, including seeking help from social care and other generous individuals. In the Philippines, community pantries became a solid response to the government’s lack of sustainable support and systematic planning.

Food pantries serve vulnerable populations with high rates of chronic disease in other countries and thus be an ideal setting for community-based health promotion programs.³ Although a pantry pertains to a private or domestic room where food is stored, the community pantry in the Philippines refers to a place open for the public. It is where necessities such as food, hygienic essentials and medicines are made available, enabling the poor to get resources without any cost. The idea is to get essential goods from donated items in the community pantry. Simultaneously, people receiving from the pantry could also bring something that they do not need to provide food and medicine to other people. The initiative invigorates the mental state and well-being of the community.

The community pantries initiative plays a vital role in public health during the Covid-19 pandemic. It sustains the people, especially the poor, who struggle to secure their food and medicine. It empowers the people to work together by donating goods, produce and available resources. It engages the local and private organizations and individual citizens to work together for the common good. Hence, it strengthens, supports and mobilizes partnerships to address the gaps in addressing public health issues in the community.

In order to sustain this initiative, policies and systems must be put into place. The call for integrating virtue ethics of compassion to public health has been proposed to ease the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic. In addition to addressing the sustainability of the community pantries, a continued concern for others is required. Responding to the basic needs of the vulnerable alleviates the poor condition of the people and seals the gap of inequalities.

Conflict of interest

The author declares that he has no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.