world less – A final pandemic preparedness assessment by the Global Preparedness Monitoring Board says the world is less meaningfully safer than before COVID, citing growing health, economic, social and political impacts alongside shortages in funding, trust, access to tre
May 17 brought two separate alarms for global health leaders: the WHO declared a global health emergency over an Ebola outbreak in Africa that has killed scores of people and sickened hundreds more. while health agencies also work to contain a hantavirus outbreak that has killed three—linked to the cruise ship where the spread began.
In the midst of those crises. a final pandemic preparedness report lands with a blunt message: the world is now more at risk of a pandemic and less safe from deadly viral outbreaks than it was before COVID.. The authors of the report write that “the evidence is clear: health. economic. social and political impacts of health emergencies have not diminished. and in important areas are growing. ” adding that “in short. reforms have not kept pace with rising pandemic risk—the world is not yet meaningfully safer.”
The assessment is the last analysis by the Global Preparedness Monitoring Board. a World Health Organization (WHO) group created after West Africa’s 2016 Ebola epidemic to evaluate how well countries are prepared for deadly pandemics.. First published in 2019. the report has offered an annual snapshot of pandemic preparedness since then. and the authors say the world has been moving in the wrong direction.
“It’s facing a convergence of threats that place the world at a greater risk of a devastating global pandemic than it was previously. ” says Jessica Justman. an epidemiologist and senior technical director of ICAP at Columbia University.. Justman. who was not involved in the report. points to the Ebola and hantavirus outbreaks as evidence that infectious disease threats “have not gone away.”
The report authors attribute the growing risks to a range of pressures. including “a lack of public trust in health institutions. ” increased threat from climate change and armed conflict. “geopolitical fragmentation. ” “a dearth of funding for health initiatives. ” weakened access to medical treatment. and what they call commercial self-interest.. On artificial intelligence. the authors note its potential to transform pandemic preparedness—but argue that without guidance. it will likely exacerbate health risks.
“The threats are broad,” Justman says.. She describes a situation in which many national governments aren’t adequately funding public health infrastructure. while the range of risks to global health has expanded to include AI risks. war. accelerating climate change and antimicrobial resistance.. The report warns that the future will bring increasingly frequent pandemics and public health emergencies that will be harder to manage and more disruptive than COVID.
“The world risks entering a cycle of accelerating health crises, where each new shock further erodes resilience and widens existing fractures,” the authors wrote.
To change course, the report says global health security needs to be financially prioritized in national budgets, “especially by the countries that have the resources to do so,” Justman says. Whether governments will act is uncertain, she adds.
In the U.S., the report’s discussion points to steps that, in the view presented, undermine that prioritization.. It says the Trump administration has slashed funding to research infectious diseases such as COVID. while also cutting off support for global health initiatives by dismantling organizations such as the U.S.. Agency for International Development, or USAID.. The administration also pulled the U.S.. out of the WHO. removing the world’s top health body’s biggest funder and cutting off crucial support for responding to emerging pandemic threats.
At the same time, the report describes friction inside the WHO system.. It says the WHO has for months struggled to finalize its own Pandemic Agreement—a treaty aimed at improving international pandemic preparedness and response after COVID.. The sticking point, as described, is how countries are expected to share emerging pathogen information with one another.
That disagreement, the report authors argue, may reflect a broader “democratic erosion” that has taken shape after successive pandemics and health emergencies over the last decade. They also stress that trust is critical to pandemic preparedness—and that trust is “in steep decline.”
“These pressures make the world not only more likely to face epidemics and pandemics going forward, but also more vulnerable to their cascading impacts,” the authors wrote.
The pattern the report depicts is consistent from threat to response: outbreaks are ongoing—Ebola declared a global health emergency on May 17 and hantavirus continues after three deaths—while the authors’ list of drivers ties rising risk to trust and funding gaps. weakened medical access. and widening political and geopolitical strain. with disagreement over pathogen information sharing adding another layer of friction.
For pandemic preparedness leaders. the immediate stakes are clear in the timing of current emergencies and in the report’s warning that the world is still not meaningfully safer than before COVID.. The report ends with a stark focus on what has not changed and what may be coming next: “The threats are broad. ” its authors write. and the world’s resilience is still being strained by pressures that. they say. make cascading impacts more likely.
pandemic preparedness Global Preparedness Monitoring Board WHO Ebola hantavirus COVID public trust health funding artificial intelligence Pandemic Agreement pathogen information sharing antimicrobial resistance climate change armed conflict