Resilience is fashionable in the health and development discourse. Next week in Stockholm I shall be leading the annual European Public Health conference where around 2,000 public health researchers and practitioners will discuss ‘Sustaining resilient and healthy communities’.

Interest in this topic has grown over the past years as entire communities have had to face devastating shocks, ranging from terrorist attacks to environmental catastrophes, the deadly Ebola outbreak, severe economic crises and fatal incidents such as Grenfell Towers.

The World Health Organisation Collaborating Centre on Health Systems and Policies in Small States at the University of Malta is developing the concept of resilience as applied to health systems in small states. On October 17, we organised a workshop to examine how the Maltese health system can better respond to the rapid socio demographic, environmental, economic and cultural changes currently taking place in our country.

This workshop went ahead as planned even though all the participants were in a state of shock due to the heinous murder that had befallen Malta the previous afternoon. It took all the resilience we could muster as a group of committed civil servants and academics to implement the objectives and deliverables planned for the day. We drew on the support of our highly empathic overseas experts.

In the days that followed, I grieved for Daphne and for Malta. I am still grieving.

I reflected upon the resilience concepts and frameworks we discussed during the workshop and attempted to apply them to the situation prevailing during this difficult period for our nation.

Daphne was resilience personified… and how! But individual resilience, no matter how strong, does not suffice. It needs to be accompanied by community and system resilience. It would appear that this is where we have failed collectively as a nation.

Daphne’s murder is a tragedy for her and for her loved ones, to whom I offer my heartfelt condolences. Every untimely and unnecessary death is indeed tragic. But Daphne’s death was also tragic for our country. It is a sign of fragility which needs to be acknowledged and addressed, expediently.

As our foreign guests sought to comfort us, in those bleak hours the day after the terrible murder, they reminded us that the Maltese people have shown a capacity for resilience throughout history. In the face of adversity, we have been credited with exhibiting courage and bravery.

However, the resilience response can take on various forms and as a nation, we appear to be more inclined to adopt the responses of absorption and adaptation.

We take in the shock, maybe we stop long enough to mourn and then we move forward stoically. At best, we tend to tweak and adjust direction slightly, always careful not to ruffle too many feathers, and then we try to adapt to the new situation.

On Monday, October 16, our country experienced a shocking wake-up call.

We tend to tweak and adjust direction slightly, always careful not to ruffle too many feathers, and then we try to adapt to the new situation

If we are serious about giving our children a country to be proud of, a country with a high index of ‘liveability’, if we are serious about sustainable development that gives equal value to economic, societal and environmental objectives, then the time for adapting and tweaking is over.

We must move forward courageously towards building transformative resilience.

We must develop systems that can better address change and uncertainty, systems that are suited to new conditions.

This systemic capacity is very important when a combination of rapid political, ecological, economic, technological, cultural and demographic changes render the existing policies and practices obsolete or untenable.

I’d daresay Malta is at this juncture.

This may well require a combination of constitutional reform, institutional strengthening and a better application of pluralism and power sharing.

This alone, however, could not be enough. We need to think more broadly and deeply. We need to fundamentally question our educational system and the culture it is generating.

A transformational approach may well require an uncomfortable examination of our collective conscience. It would appear that while we have discarded traditional and religious values (as has happened in several other European countries), we failed to replace them sufficiently with secular post-modern norms leaving a gaping hole that renders us collectively vulnerable.

This is a mammoth task. It is not something any government can accomplish alone. Undoubtedly, for a government to carry out such a process successfully, it has to be able to demonstrate an honest and strong commitment to reform, underpinned by principled leadership. This needs to be mirrored in our Parliament too.

However, this process furthermore requires a shared and sincere engagement by all actors in society. The ultimate aim would be to create a framework that favours a more pluralistic, tolerant and vibrant democracy, not only on the statute book but also in daily life.

A democracy which truly incorporates the checks and balances needed to address the challenges of the 21st century.

As a doctor and academic, as a mother who wishes to bequeath an aesthetically and morally beautiful country to my children, I commit myself to participate in such a reform process.

If we can manage to put narrow sectarian and political interests aside to make this happen, then Daphne would not have died in vain.

Natasha Azzopardi-Muscat is a senior lecturer at the University of Malta and president of the European Public Health Association.