The world is no better prepared for a pandemic than at the end of 2019. According to the Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response (IPPPR) of the World Health Organization (WHO). According to the expert committee, the situation may be even worse than before the corona pandemic, due to the economic state of most countries.
Last year, the panel already concluded that the world had failed in tackling the corona crisis. Now it says countries are just as vulnerable to another pandemic.
“Should a new health threat emerge this year, the world would have to rely largely on the same tools it had at the end of 2019,” said Helen Clark, a former Prime Minister of New Zealand. “The weak links we identified then still exist today, and if more concrete efforts are not made to fix them, we could once again struggle to protect people from a new pandemic threat.”
Because the corona pandemic has been tough economically and most countries are now also suffering from rising prices, the world may be less able to financially absorb the blow of a new pandemic.
Pandemic Fund
According to the panel, it is positive that more money is going to the WHO on a structural basis and that a pandemic fund will be set up, but the improvements are going too slowly. The distribution of vaccines in the world could also be improved.
The panel’s report comes a week before all WHO member states will meet again in Geneva. There they make annual decisions about the health situation and will discuss the panel’s findings. That calls on government leaders to make plans within the United Nations. Only at the highest political level would the decisiveness be present to reach better agreements.
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