World remains unprepared to face new pandemics, warns report

Reform efforts to prevent the threat of new pandemics are slow and fragmented, leaving the world unprepared, as when Covid-19 emerged, warns a report released this Wednesday (18).

A year ago, a group of independent experts presented a critical report at the annual assembly of the World Health Organization (WHO), which claimed that poor coordination and wrong decisions allowed the Covid pandemic to reach a catastrophic scale.

At the time, the independent group, co-chaired by former New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark and former Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, drew up a list of measures needed to overcome Covid and ensure the world was better prepared for it. face future threats.

In an assessment report written a year later, however, the group, which is no longer active, warns that the world continues to “play” and that inaction is laying “the foundations for another pandemic”.

“We have, to a large extent, the same tools and the same system that existed in December 2019 to respond to a pandemic threat,” Clark told the press.

“And they weren’t good enough,” he added.

Clark, however, praised that the “transformation work needed at a global level to prevent the next pandemic has already begun”, pointing out how the new mechanisms created after the emergence of Covid made it possible to deliver 1.5 billion doses of vaccines to the most vulnerable countries. poor.

He also praised ongoing efforts to diversify production of vaccines and antiviral drugs.
An agreement is still awaited for the WHO to have more secure and flexible funding at its disposal, while plans are being drawn up for the creation of a specific fund for pandemics.

Changes to international health rules are being considered, as well as a new “legal instrument” — such as a treaty or other form of agreement — to simplify the world’s approach to pandemic preparedness and response.

But Clark cautioned that all changes happen at a very slow pace and that changes to the WHO budget are unlikely to be fully implemented for nearly a decade.