Context: This initiative is part of the intergenerational Existential Security Threats -EXIST Board including Strategy X-EXIST with a series of high level ‘Plans’ enabled with digital solutions by the Global Futures Platform for Planet People and Peace - further partners are welcome to advance collaborative actions and to create tools for different audiences.
Key Challenges – Increasing Pandemic Risks combined with less Resilience:
- The COVID-19 Pandemic: cost millions of lives and had a devastating impact on the global economy, for 2020-21 estimated at US$10 trillion or 4.3% in lost GDP, and has acted to destabilise global security with a shift to populist governments.
- Existential Threat Potential from Pandemics: in the past about 90% of the indigenous populations in the Americas died from smallpox, measles and influenza.
- Pandemics from Nature: the risk of pandemics is higher than ever before, 70% of new and emerging infections in humans originate from animals, expanding populations, urbanisation, travel and climate change increases our exposure.
- Pandemic Watch List: 24 pathogens with pandemic potential or resistance to antimicrobials have been identified; in 2024, 17 outbreaks of dangerous diseases were reported, with Marburg virus, Mpox and Avian ‘flu (H5N1) of current concern.
- Engineered and Synthetic Pandemics: gain of function research has created more lethal variants, including vaccine resistant smallpox; stronger global governance to prevent intentional or non-intentional release of infections is needed for the increasing number of scientists and laboratories able to genetically engineer pathogens.
- Governance, Coordination and Communication: despite progress made with the Pandemic Treaty, the weakening of the WHO and our global multi-lateral organisations, along with misinformation and a lack of trust, increases pandemic risks.
- Public Health Systems and Resilience: following the COVID Pandemic we saw a reversal in SDG progress, a widening of inequalities, a drop in life expectancy, and an increase in Non-Communicable Diseases - indicating a lack of population resilience for future pandemics, which is worsened by cut backs in our Public Health Systems.
We Know How to Prevent Pandemics – But We Need to Be Prepared
A Plan for PEOPLE – to Prevent Pandemics:
- Enable Global Governance for Pandemics: invest in the Pandemic Treaty, and strengthen health diplomacy to transform global health security as a global good;
- Strengthen Public Health Systems: prevention, detection, early warning systems, preparedness and response operations with digital solutions
- Enhance Population Resilience: with Universal Health Systems to promote resilience and population well-being for All
A Systems Framework for Healthy People - Essential Public Health Operations
|
1. Governance: public health legislation; policy; strategy; financing; organisation; quality assurance: transparency, accountability and audit. 2. Knowledge: surveillance, monitoring and evaluation; research and evidence; risk and innovation; dissemination and uptake. 3. Protection: international health regulation (IHR) and co-ordination; communicable disease control; emergency preparedness; environmental health; climate change and sustainability. 4. Promotion: inequalities; environmental determinants; social and economic determinants; resilience; behaviour and health literacy; life course; healthy settings. 5. Prevention: primary prevention: vaccination; secondary prevention: screening; tertiary prevention: rehabilitation, healthcare management and planning. 6. People-centred care: primary healthcare; secondary healthcare; tertiary healthcare; rehabilitation. 7. Advocacy: leadership and ethics; community engagement and empowerment; communications; sustainable development. 8. Capacity: workforce development for public health workers, health workers and wider workforce; workforce planning: numbers, resources and infrastructure; standards, curriculum and accreditation; capabilities, teaching and training. |
A Global Futures Platform – Transforming Health for People, the Planet and Peace
Recommendations for Preventing Pandemics:
|