By MONICA KAYOMBO/Zambia, Lusaka,
FIVE years ago, the world experienced a devastating public health threat, COVID-19 which exposed deep global inequalities in health emergency response, and this was an eye-opener.
Global health leaders, policymakers, and pandemic experts recently gathered on the sidelines of the 79th World Health Assembly (WHA79) in Geneva to assess whether the world is truly prepared for the next pandemic threat, with many warning that despite lessons learned from COVID-19, major gaps in financing, equity, surveillance, and political commitment remain unresolved.
During the high-level side event themed “Are we ready for the next pandemic threat?” held on May 20, 2026, panelists stressed that the adoption of the Pandemic Agreement and reforms to the International Health Regulations marked important progress, but cautioned that preparedness must move beyond declarations to concrete implementation.
Speakers from Brazil, Ghana, Qatar, the World Health Organization (WHO), and civil society emphasized the need for stronger health systems, sustainable domestic financing, local manufacturing of vaccines and medicines, early warning systems, and greater international cooperation to prevent the world from repeating the failures witnessed during COVID-19.
The discussion also highlighted Africa’s growing push for self-reliance in health security, with representatives pointing to investments in surveillance, workforce preparedness, and regional collaboration as essential pillars for future resilience. At the same time, panelists warned that geopolitical tensions, funding shortfalls, and weakening multilateralism could undermine global readiness for future outbreaks.
Co-Director of the Global Health Centre, Prof. Vinh-Kim Nguyen, observed that four major forces are currently shaping pandemics: artificial intelligence and data capture driven by massive economic interests; powerful synergies between global warming, environmental instability, biodiversity collapse, and pathogen emergence; and more.
Prof. Nguyen said the third factor affecting global pandemics is an unprecedented demographic shift—global ageing.
“So, why is ageing relevant here? Well, it is because ageing populations are increasingly reliant on pharmaceuticals and technologies to remain healthy. So, we have ageing and vulnerability is sort of twinned. And what we have seen in the last few years is the weaponization of supply chains and development assistance to project state power,” he emphasised.
Prof. Nguyen added that the fourth contributor is governance.
He said during the Ebola pandemic in 2014, a tension between biosafety and humanitarian logic emerged.
“The logic of sovereignty, vaccine nationalism, supply chain weaponization and other developments signalled the end of solidarity as anything more than rhetoric in global health,” he said.
“The Pathogen Access and Benefit Sharing (PABs) negotiations have revealed termites in the wood of the architecture that has been built or designed for global health. That is the contradiction between the rhetoric of multilateralism and the reality of growing unilateralism,” he said.
Prof. Nguyen said what strikes him is that when stakeholders talk about pandemics, they are trapped in a linear logic of cause and effect. What we are dealing with is a very complex system. So, we are not very well equipped epistemologically,” he said.
Co-Chair of the World Health Organization (WHO) Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response, Ms Helen Clark, thanked the Graduate Institute for hosting them and said all stakeholders have continued working to provide an independent and evidence-based voice on pandemic prevention, preparedness, and response, focused on the question: are we ready? And if not, what do we need to do?
Ms Clark noted that a lot is changing with regard to pandemics and that the new international regulations and amendments in force will put all stakeholders to the test.
She said the annex gets to the heart of tensions around COVID-19 response, particularly inequitable access to countermeasures.
“And so, it is not a surprise that voices for equity and justice want to see this properly addressed in the Pathogen Access and Benefit Sharing (PABS) arrangement before the whole agreement can move forward. We know in this area there is fundamental asymmetry. Vaccines have long been largely manufactured in high-income countries, and they are slow to get out to anyone else,” she observed.
Ms Clark said it was her hope that member states would come together around a solution on PABS, because it would be a great misfortune if so much work had not gone into the agreement.
She said it would be important to act with urgency and not wait until the agreement is fully in place.
“The Pandemic Fund never got the funding that was anticipated would be needed for preparedness, and if a pandemic threat arose tomorrow, we would be scrambling again for emergency funds because there is not a mechanism to deal with that adequately at this point,” she said.
She said there is a need to monitor where to best invest funds at the national level, understand where risk is greatest, and have at least some broad idea of preparedness options.
“The Independent Panel has issued a new report this week on monitoring issues, taking a comprehensive approach from identifying a range of risks through preparedness and response capacity,” she said.
Ms Clark also said one issue heavily debated in dozens of reports, op-eds, and discussions is the global health architecture.
“And I think discussions on global health architecture have started at the wrong place. They are looking at structures and efficiencies. I think you need to start with people’s needs, then countries’ needs, and build upward. In that architecture, it will be very important to keep advocating for Pandemic Preparedness and Response (PPR) to be a priority.”
She observed that Universal Health Coverage (UHC) is not sufficient on its own, as it is a platform on which PPR must be built.
“You must build a range of issues that need to be prioritised,” she said.
Ms Clark said later in the year there will be a United Nations (UN) high-level meeting on pandemic prevention, preparedness, and response, and given that the PABS annex is not completed, the meeting could help build momentum toward implementation and ratification. She added that the Independent Panel has issued a paper calling for the meeting to be more concrete and action-oriented rather than abstract.
Dr Edem Adzogenu, Special Representative of the President of Ghana, said COVID-19 was the defining crisis of our generation, as it exposed not only weaknesses in health systems but also the fragility of economies, supply chains, governance structures, and social systems.
“Above all, it reminded us that in an interconnected world, no country is immune from global health threats. Today, an important question confronts us all: are we better prepared for the next pandemic than we were in 2020?” he said.
Dr Adzogenu said while important progress has been made, it is important to honestly answer that question.
He said many countries have strengthened systems, expanded scientific collaboration, and advanced global preparedness discussions.
“Yet recent outbreaks across regions continue to remind us that pandemic threats remain real, dynamic, and capable of spreading rapidly across borders,” he said.
He said the lesson from COVID-19 is that preparedness cannot remain reactive, and the world cannot afford cycles of panic followed by complacency.
He said preparedness must become a permanent national and global priority grounded in prevention, resilience, and early action.
“This requires sustained investment in surveillance systems, laboratories, workforce development, emergency coordination, and resilient health systems at both national and community levels. It requires strong and consistent political leadership,” he said.
He observed that climate change, environmental degradation, rapid urbanisation, and changing human -animal interactions are increasing the risk of emerging infectious diseases.
He said this is why the One Health approach must move beyond rhetoric and become an operational reality.
“In Ghana, we are strengthening multi-sectoral collaboration across human, animal, and environmental health sectors as part of our broader health security agenda. We are also advancing a new national action plan for health security to strengthen preparedness capacities, improve coordination, and build resilience across all levels of government,” he said.
Dr Adzogenu said COVID-19 also exposed deep global inequalities in access to vaccines, diagnostics, therapeutics, financing, and manufacturing capacity.
He said no region should again find itself at the back of the queue during a global emergency.
He said the future of preparedness must therefore be not only more responsive but also more equitable and self-sustaining, adding that countries and regions must be empowered to build stronger domestic systems, regional manufacturing capacity, intelligent civil systems, infrastructure, and sustainable preparedness mechanisms.
Dr Adzogenu said strengthening local production, technology transfer, and regional cooperation will be essential to reducing vulnerabilities during future crises.
He observed that it is important to move from fragmented systems towards integrated data and surveillance architectures capable of supporting faster detection, risk assessment, and decision-making.
“Emerging technologies including artificial intelligence offer important opportunities to strengthen early warning systems and public health response capacities,” he said.
Dr Adzogenu said innovation must always be guided by ethics, inclusion, trust, and responsible governance.
He added that preparedness also requires sustainable financing, and while mechanisms such as the Pandemic Fund are important steps forward, financing must become predictable, sustained, and aligned with national strategies.
He said the responsibility, therefore, is not only to respond more effectively to future crises but to prevent them where possible, detect them earlier, and protect populations more equitably.
“Posterity will judge us not simply by what we learnt from COVID-19, but by whether we transformed those lessons into stronger systems, federal partnerships, and a safer future for humanity,’’ Dr Adzogenu said.
Inter-governmental Working Group Vice Chairperson and Advisor to the Prime Minister of Qatar, Her Excellency Hanan Al Kuwari, said the adoption of the Pandemic Agreement last year was an important achievement for global health, as it demonstrated that countries, despite geopolitical pressures, retained the political will to negotiate and reach collective commitment.
“However, we all know that the Pandemic Agreement without the PABS annex is incomplete. PABS is not just a technical annex. It is a core equity commitment to the entire architecture. It determines whether a country that rapidly shares a pathogen sample will actually benefit from the vaccines and treatments that follow. Until that is resolved, the agreement cannot be signed or ratified,” she said.
Her Excellency Al Kuwari said it is important to continue to support bridging the North–South divide during pandemics.
Brazil’s Secretary of Health and Environmental Surveillance, Mariângela Batista Galvão Simão, who is also a senior expert in health equity, focused on moving beyond theory with regard to future pandemic preparedness and lessons learnt from COVID-19.
She emphasized the need for stronger international cooperation and for countries to translate global agreements, including the Pandemic Agreement and International Health Regulations reforms, into real operational preparedness systems.
She said Brazil remains committed to strengthening regional and global health security, particularly through South–South cooperation and public health system strengthening.
