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| King Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck |
The Kingdom of Bhutan has an impressive record when it comes
to creative approaches to health and wellbeing. In 1972, Bhutan’s then king – King
Jigme Singye Wangchuck – famously made a half-joking remark suggesting Gross National
Happiness (GNH) was as important as Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The idea was
subsequently taken up by the Centre for Bhutan Studies who developed policy
screening tools which measure the impact of different policies on the
populations wellbeing level. Last month, the i-newspaper (26 June) reported
that the current ruler of Bhutan – 41-year-old King Jigme Khesar Namgyel
Wangchuck – is walking the nation warning his people about COVID:
“Wearing a
baseball cap and knee-length traditional gho robe, carrying a backpack, Bhutan's
king has walked through jungles infested with leeches and snakes, trekked
mountains and quarantined several times...”It seems, for the past 14 months, the king has been
travelling “by foot, car and horse to remote hamlets to oversee measures to
warn his tiny kingdom of 700,000 about the coronavirus outbreak that has flared
up in neighbouring India.”
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| Alfred the Great |
It’s hard to imagine a member of the British royal family taking
such a concerned, constructive and direct approach to public health although, of
course, last December the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge did embark on a controversial
three-day whistle-stop tour of England, Scotland and Wales to thank Covid
frontline workers, despite it being an offence at the time for anyone to cross
the borders for non-essential purposes.
King Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck’s nationwide, 14-month
mission seems somehow much more benevolent and committed – the sort of thing you
can imagine Alfred the Great might have done for his people, had he not been so
preoccupied with repelling Viking raids.
Be that as it may, Bhutan’s ruler’s creative approach to health
and wellbeing seems to be paying off for king and country – at the time of writing,
the COVID death toll in Bhutan is reported to be just one person, compared with
the UK’s more than 128,000.
