Evaluation of the Performance of world Countries' Health Systems in the Face of Covid-19 in Respect of Vaccination Role

Since the beginning of the Covid-19 epidemic, many countries have been involved in fighting the disease. The outbreak of this disease has caused irrecoverable damages to countries in various aspects such as human resources, economic situation, and social welfare. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the performance of world countries in the face of covid-19 in respect of the role of vaccination and to propose applicable approaches for countries with lower performance.

In this research, a three-phase method was developed to evaluate the performance of 88 countries in the face of Covid-19. In the first phase, the countries were clustered, using the k-means algorithm. In the second phase, the data envelopment analysis model was implemented once on the clusters and then on all the countries without considering the clusters. In the third phase, after presentation of the concept of resilience in the Covid-19 era, an Analytic Hierarchy Process was implemented with three criteria, including the results of data envelopment analysis model without considering the clusters, the results of data envelopment analysis model considering the clusters and resilience, and then the ranking of the countries' performance in the face of Covid-19 was provided.

Based on the results, 15 performance scores were obtained for the countries in the face of Covid-19, among which China, Fiji, Seychelles, Kyrgyzstan and Tanzania had the highest rankings and Bangladesh, Nepal, Georgia and Pakistan had the lowest performance levels. Iran is in the sixth place and in the average performance position of the countries.

Based on the findings of this study, the countries with low performance level in the face of Covid-19 need to apply various strategies in different areas in order to improve their performance level. These strategies include planning and approval of joint programs to control and prevent the spread of disease, applying quarantine policy and restrictions on communities, planning and implementation of appropriate strategies regarding the export and import of drugs and medical equipment, allocating appropriate funds to research projects on Covid-19, banning the export of drugs effective in the treatment of Covid-19, and providing accurate and up-to-date information for raising people’s awareness.