Main Report of the Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response
In July last year, I took on the task of co-chairing The Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response.
The Panel was set up in response to the World Health Assembly's call for an impartial, independent, and comprehensive review of the internationally co-ordinated response to COVID-19.
On 12 May, after many months of work, the Panel's report was launched, and since then I, Co-Chair President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, other panellists, and members of out Secretariat have been giving many briefings and interviews and participating in many events to promote the report and ensure that its recommendations are debated.
The report documents how the outbreak of COVID-19 evolved into a global pandemic, and makes recommendations which could avert a similar such catastrophe. The Panel has called for transformational change in the international architecture - including the establishment of a Global Health Threats Council at Head of State and Government level, a new Pandemic Financing Facility, a new international treaty on pandemic preparedness and response, a standing platform for the provision of the global public goods of diagnostics, therapeutics, and vaccines in the event of future pandemics. We propose that a special meeting of the United Nations General Assembly be convened at Head of State and Government level later this year to agree on a political declaration backing the reforms required.
We also call for strengthening the authority and financing of the World Health Organisation, for the immediate redistribution of vaccines from high income to low and middle income countries, and scaled up manufacturing of COVID-19 vaccines around the world.
The link to the Panel's Report is here. Also on the Independent Panel's website you will find a range of background reports, including a chronology setting out the pathway COVID-19 followed from outbreak to pandemic, a 28-country study on a wide range of national responses to the pandemic, and other papers looking in detail at the WHO, the socio-economic impacts of COVID-19, and issues around treaties, vaccines, and intellectual property issues.
As the old saying goes, those who do not learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them. There are many lessons to be learned from the COVID-19 pandemic, and many practical changes which could be made to ensure that the world's peoples do not suffer from such a catastrophe again.
On Wednesday 16 June, 7 pm NZ, 8 am UK, 9 am CET, 5 pm Australian Eastern Time, I will be discussing the long shadow of COVID-19 with Rt Hon Gordon Brown, former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, in a members-only event for The Helen Clark Foundation. Click here to find out how you can link to the event.
