United States -The next pandemic may be ready to “pop up when least expected,” despite all the advancements made in the current Covid pandemic, according to the International body charged with preparing for the eventuality.
New Risks Are Emerging
The main factors that have shaped the world today – from big cities and concentrated animal farming to inequality, climate change, and the rise of artificial intelligence – are making the world more dangerous for a pandemic, the Global Preparedness Monitoring Board said in its latest report on Monday, as reported by Telegraph.
The warning comes at a time when the world appears to be on the precipice of another test of its preparedness: H5N1 bird flu is still infecting humans who have worked with infected cattle and poultry in the United States, and a new and highly contagious sub-strain of mpox with pandemic capability may have broken out in central Africa.
Current Health Threats on the Horizon
But right to the time this report was being completed, an incidence of Marburg, which is said to be a cousin of Ebola with a death rate that may be as high as 88 percent, has occurred in Rwanda where more than one person has died from the sickness with much efforts being made to contain the virus.
“Changing patterns of life and the ongoing encroachment of human activities into natural environments” are “altering the global risk landscape and making the emergence of new pathogens more likely,” the report’s authors state.
It is, however, regrettable that epidemics are likely to happen today more than ever before since the world is not ready for them – today’s epidemics.
“Humanity is better equipped than ever to contain outbreaks at source; it has better medical interventions that can reduce morbidity and mortality and is better organized to respond through international frameworks such as the International Health Regulations,” the authors write.
“Despite these improvements, made in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, there is every likelihood that the next pandemic will again catch the world napping without the readiness plans primed for implementation from day one.”
‘The world is not ready for the next pandemic.’
The group, appointed independently by the Director-General of the World Health Organisation and the President of the World Bank, or the GPMB, ultimately proposed three vital guidelines for governments and other organizations that plan pandemics.
The first is to ensure that the risk profiles and assessments focus on the multicausal elements of risks that are likely to catalyze new epidemics or which will degrade the globe’s capacity to respond, like interconnectedness and life science advances.
World leaders must also include equity in their prepared plans for COVID-19 and ensure that they contain measures that respond to the “special and essential needs of at-risk groups,” particularly in relation to “medical countermeasures” such as vaccines or treatment.
Call to Action for Global Readiness
Lastly, the GPMB urged that intersectoral cooperation has to be enhanced.
Joy Phumaphi, the Former Minister of Health of Botswana and GPMB co-chairperson, noted that the recommendations are ‘a fundamental change for the global community on preparedness’.
Currently, however, the world cannot afford another pandemic, according to her.
“The world is not prepared for the next pandemic. ‘Africa is not ready, Europe is not ready, the Americas are not ready, Oceania is not ready, and Asia is not ready,’ said Ms Oshiio [Abdirahman Omar Qassim] at a briefing to media before the release of the report.
It is necessary to manage those elements of the contemporary world, like urbanization or inequality, which, according to the report, are the risk drivers to reach a superior phase of global readiness.
From the 15 risk drivers that the GPMB was able to establish, they labeled four of them as having the highest level that influenced the risk.
At present, people’s mobility around the globe “reached its highest level ever and is expected to rise in the coming years,” while a massive rise in commercial poultry trade, which led to the spread of H5N1, has already been in progress.
Thus, social networks exist, and people all over the world are subjected to the influence of fake news, and ‘‘PHOs and governments are trying to contain it.’’
The Top five risk drivers are per the GPMB; however, the fifth is the most basic.
“The trend is that there has been a decline in trust in many countries, distrust in institutions is on the rise, and trust in the multilateral system has been weakening,” the authors noted. “This is undermining our global ability, not only to handle health crises but also to solve global problems using international cooperation.”
Covid skepticism and disinformation impaired trust in governments, institutions, and public health organizations during the pandemic due to controversies regarding the use of lockdowns, quarantines, and vaccination drives.
The times lay for a highly vigorous and extensive conspiracy that, to the present day, stubbornly stirs controversies regarding the aspects of public health and menacingly hovers over the work of preventing threats that the further years may bring.
For instance, in 2023, one out of every four individuals in Britain stated that he or she considered the Covid pandemic to be fake news, while a similar number of Americans also held the same view.
In the developing world, people do not have access to medical countermeasures – not in the fight against Covid, and now mpox, which leads to people not trusting the health authorities, as reported by Telegraph.
When asked how the damage can be rectified, Ms Phumaphi vowed that only action could rectify it.
“The only way to rebuild that trust is to take care of these challenges,” she said. “We have to take actions that actually demonstrate that we can work together as a global community in an equitable manner.”