The challenge of strengthening the global capacity to respond equitably to future pandemics

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic, despite the sustained global efforts prior to its emergence under the coordination of the World Health Organization (WHO), demonstrated its insufficiency. Today, debates on how to improve equity in future responses to new pandemics and on how to approach the next World Health Assembly in May 2024 remain imprecise and suffer criticisms regarding the deliberation processes, both in the Working Group on International Health Regulations (IHR) Amendments (WGIHR) and the Intergovernmental Negotiating Body for a new Pandemic Agreement (INB). There is little time left, and WHO and PAHO authorities are urging WHO Member States not to miss this opportunity. However, it is the WHO, as the leader of this process, that bears the primary responsibility for considering "equity" as the foundational value that originated both ongoing initiatives, remembering that containing risks at their source was a guiding principle of the IHR (2005). This commits the community and the international industry to accept that the greater the vulnerability and poverty of a population, the higher the risk of suffering infectious outbreaks, which can contribute to the start of a pandemic. Therefore, no one can be left behind, urging support for the most delayed in improving their capabilities for alert, surveillance, response, resilience, and their technological development and/or access to essential health goods and supplies, with additional financial and organizational resources.