King and country – a creative approach to public health in Bhutan

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.”

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.