July 9, 2021
On July 9, the Group of Twenty’s (G20) High Level Independent Panel released a report on Pandemic Preparedness and Response. The report: “A Global Deal for Our Pandemic Age” proposes a global plan that reduces vulnerability to future pandemics in order to avoid repeating the devastation caused by COVID-19.
The G20 report explicitly calls for the the Global Fund to be an institutional player in future pandemic preparedness and response.
Below are some highlights:
- “Investments in pandemic preparedness should be integrated with the ongoing efforts and infrastructure to tackle endemic infectious diseases. Existing global health institutions like the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria and Gavi should be given a more explicit mandate and increased funding to invest in system-level preparedness.”
- “It is not possible to neatly separate efforts to counter new diseases with epidemic potential from continuing efforts to contain existing infectious diseases. They require many similar investments in infrastructure, healthcare workforce and technical specialists, and technologies and information systems.”
- “Resilient national health systems – from healthcare capacity to trained human resources and frameworks for policy decisions in crisis – remain the foundation for stopping an emerging outbreak. National surveillance and preparedness is the bedrock of effective global surveillance and information-sharing.”
- Key global health intermediaries like Global Fund, Gavi and UNICEF should work with countries to improve the value proposition for private sector co-investments in dual-use capacities that can significantly contribute to health outcomes during the inter-pandemic years, including by making a forceful contribution towards the control of endemic diseases.
Read more about the Global Fund– the largest multilateral investor in grants for health systems.