Recovery, Renewal, Resilience

The Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response recently issued a report calling on the international community to employ a package of reforms to transform the global pandemic preparedness and response system to prevent a future pandemic. The report finds that the current system is unfit to prevent another novel and highly infectious disease from developing into a pandemic. The report recommends a transformational reform of the existing pandemic prevention, preparedness and response system, including:

• Form a “Global Health Threats Council” to ensure political commitment to pandemic preparedness, prevention and response. In the Council:
  • Assign responsibility to key actors through “peer recognition and scrutiny”
  • Establish a ‘Pandemic Framework Convention’ in all countries within the next six months
• Introduce an international surveillance system to:
  • Enable the WHO to share information about outbreaks of concern, and
  • Rapidly deploy experts to investigate such outbreaks
• Immediate investment in national preparedness by:
  • Reviewing current preparedness plans
  • Allocating the required financing and resources to ensure readiness for another health event
• Make The Access to COVID-19 Tools Accelerator (ACT-A) a global platform to transform the current market model to one targeted at delivering global public goods (vaccines, diagnostics, supplies)
• Establish a funding model for the WHO to increase its agency and financing
• Develop an “International Pandemic Financing Facility” to:
  • Fund ongoing preparedness
  • Enable immediate finance support for response if a pandemic is declared
• Adopt a political declaration which commits to transformative reform of global pandemic preparedness and response