Spending US$5 per person annually on global health security over the next five years could prevent a future “catastrophic” pandemic, former WHO director-general Gro Harlem Brundtland said.
It would cost the world billions of dollars, but that amount would be a huge saving on the US$11 trillion response to the COVID-19 pandemic, said Brundtland, who, with other prominent international experts, sounded the alarm over the threat of a fast-spreading deadly pandemic in September last year.
The costs are based on estimates by McKinsey & Co, which found the average annual costs to prepare for pandemic over the next five years would be equivalent to US$4.70 per capita.
Brundtland, cochair of the Global Preparedness Monitoring Board (GPMB) and a former prime minister of Norway, said there had been a collective failure to take prevention and response seriously, and to prioritize it.
“We are all paying the price,” she said.
The GPMB, co-convened by the World Bank and the WHO, said in its inaugural report last year that the world was grossly unprepared for the threat of a global health crisis, which the board predicted could be caused by a lethal respiratory pathogen.
“We knew it was a real threat, which is why we called the alarm,” Brundtland said.
“We saw the preparedness was far from what it should have been at that time,” she said.
COVID-19 has provided a harsh test that proved them right, she said.
“Because what we are in the middle of can happen again. We need to be better prepared,” she added.
The board’s second report, published yesterday, says another pandemic is “sure to come” without strong leadership, solidarity and collective global action.
“We have created a world where a shock anywhere can become a catastrophe everywhere, while growing nationalism and populism undermine our shared peace, prosperity and security,” the report’s foreword said.
Infectious diseases feed off divisiveness, and divisions in society can be deadly, it said.
The GMPB’s members, who also include US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci, Wellcome Trust director Jeremy Farrar and Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention Director George Gao (高福), said global health security could not continue to be funded by development assistance.
They called for stronger support for international institutions, more responsive financial systems and for a UN summit on global health security to be convened to agree a framework to prepare and respond to future health emergencies.
They called for COVID-19 vaccines and other treatments to be allocated fairly and equitably.
All countries should receive enough vaccine for at least 2 percent of their populations, they said.
Brundtland said it was unfortunate that US President Donald Trump had refused to join a global scheme set up by the WHO to distribute COVID-19 vaccines.
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