The world is on the edge of even greater pandemic damage

Country: World Sources: World Bank, World Health Organization Expert group tasked with global monitoring warns pandemic risk is outpacing investments Geneva, 18 May 2026 | A decade after Ebola exposed dangerous gaps in outbreak preparedness – and six years after COVID-19 turned those gaps into a global catastrophe – the evidence is clear: the world is not safer from pandemics. A new report from the Global Preparedness Monitoring Board (GPMB), A World on the Edge: Priorities for a Pandemic‑Resilient Future , finds that as infectious disease outbreaks become more frequent they are also becoming more damaging, with widening health, economic, political and social impacts, and less capacity to recover from them. The Board warns that a decade of investment has not kept pace with rising pandemic risk. New initiatives have improved aspects of preparedness, but overall these efforts are being offset by the growing effects of rising geopolitical fragmentation, ecological disruption, and global travel, especially as development assistance falls to levels not seen since 2009 . The report analyses a decade of Public Heath Emergencies of International Concern (PHEICs), from Ebola in West Africa to COVID-19 to mpox, assessing their impacts on health systems, economies and societies. On key measures – such as equitable access to diagnostics, vaccines and therapeutics – the world is moving backwards. Mpox vaccines reached affected low-income countries almost two years after the outbreak began – even slower than the 17 months it took for COVID-19 vaccines. And the escalating toll of such emergencies extends far beyond health and economic impacts: both Ebola and COVID-19 damaged trust in government, civil liberties and democratic norms, amplified by politicized responses, attacks on scientific institutions and polariz...

Original source: Relief Web