Global failure to prepare for pandemics ‘gambling with children’s future’

World leaders are “gambling with the health and well-being of their children and grandchildren” by failing to prepare for a future pandemic, a new report warns.

Amid rising cases of the H5N1 bird flu in mammals and an outbreak of mpox in central Africa, two leading stateswomen have said a lack of preparation has left the world vulnerable to “devastation”.

Helen Clark, former Prime Minister of New Zealand, and Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, former President of Liberia, co-chaired the Independent Panel on Pandemic Preparedness and Response. At a World Health Assembly in May 2021, it made a series of recommendations to change the way the world tackles pandemic threats and avoid mistakes made during the Covid-19 response.

Today they said that at the current pace of preparation, the world would likely be overwhelmed by any new pandemic threat.

“This is not the time to gamble. Inaction is a dangerous political choice,” they wrote in a new one reportin which leaders are accused of shifting focus “to more politically pressing issues.”

The three years since their first recommendations are “a dangerously long time to leave gaping holes in the national, regional and international systems designed to protect 8 billion people,” they said.

The H5N1 bird flu outbreak, which is affecting more mammals including dairy cattle in the US, “predicts an influenza pandemic that the world is far from ready for,” the report warned.

Meanwhile, there is a new, deadlier form of it mpox has led to children dying in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where there is little access to testing and no access to vaccines.

“The worst could be just around the corner – these should be seen as canaries in the mine,” Clark said. “We need to be prepared for something that could happen at any time and energize leaders to make the right arrangements, both globally and nationally.”

The report warns of a lack of efficient systems that low- and middle-income countries can rely on for access to medicines and vaccines in the event of a new pandemic.

Surveillance systems are not accurate and there is “a dangerous gap in trust between countries, within countries and within communities”. International financing is inadequate, and countries struggling with debt and high interest rates are not investing enough at home.

Some progress has been made, the report notes, including amending the agreement earlier this month International health regulations to improve the speed of information sharing and to formalize the definition of a pandemic emergency.

However, Clark said these changes must be fully implemented, and called for greater transparency on countries’ levels of preparedness, an independent monitoring body and a formal group of world leaders working on pandemic prevention. Changes to the structure of the World Health Organization might be necessary, she suggested.

She said: “The funds now available pale in comparison to the needs, and high-income countries are clinging too tightly to traditional charity-based approaches to equality. The pandemic deal is crucial and must succeed, but it still needs to be agreed. In short, if there were a pandemic threat today – for example, if H5N1 were to spread from person to person, the world would likely be overwhelmed again.”

“Lessons could be learned from Ebola in West Africa,” Johnson Sirleaf said. “Just five years later, when we had not applied those lessons, lessons from Covid could be learned again. There is no need to keep learning. Instead of guessing, leaders can make practical decisions and apply those lessons.”