Without Adequate Funding, World is Vulnerable to ‘Prolonged’ COVID-19 Pandemic

Singaporean Senior Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam

 

Link to the source article >> https://healthpolicy-watch.news/world-is-vulnerable-to-prolonged-covid-19-pandemic/

Global health security is dangerously underfunded, making the world vulnerable to a “prolonged COVID-19 pandemic with repeated waves affecting all countries” and future pandemics, Singaporean Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam told a World Health Organization (WHO) media briefing on Wednesday.

Shanmugaratnam, who co-chairs the G20 High Level Independent Panel on Financing the Global Commons for Pandemic Preparedness and Response, urged global governments to pledge at least $10 billion more every year to address this and future pandemics.

His panel has recommended the establishment of a Global Health Threats Fund to mobilise money for pandemic surveillance and response.

“The current funding for global health is raised by individual global health organisations on a siloed basis. It is also largely dependent on discretionary bilateral aid. The result is a non-system of complex inefficient, unpredictable, and greatly inadequate funding,” said Shanmugaratnam.

“We need a new global mechanism to overcome these silos mobilise resources on the needed scale and predictability.”

He described the additional resources needed as “very small investments, compared to the costs of a prolonged COVID-19 pandemic” and “tiny investments, compared to the costs of future pandemics”.

“We have to move away from thinking about funding of global health security in terms of foreign aid towards thinking about it as a strategic investment that all nations must make not only for the good of the global community, but because it is in each nation’s self interest,” he added.

He also called for the “repurposing” of international financial agencies – the World Bank, IMF and other multilateral development banks – so that financing “resilience against climate change and pandemic security” are part of their core mandates.

WHO Director General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told the briefing that the COVID-19 pandemic has stabilised over the past week, “but at the very high rate of 4.5 million cases and 68,000 deaths”.

Tedros described the next three months as “a critical period for shaping the future of pandemic preparedness and response”.

WHO believes that “whatever structures and mechanisms emerge”, they have the engagement and ownership of all countries, be aligned with the constitutional mandate of WHO rather than creating parallel structures, involve partners from across the One Health spectrum, including animal, and environmental health, ensure coherence with the International Health Regulations, and be accountable to all member states, added Tedros.

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