Pandemic Preparedness at a Crossroads: Financing and Governing Global Health Security

Pandemic preparedness stands at a crossroads. As infectious disease outbreaks become more frequent and increasingly intersect with climate change, conflict, and displacement, strengthening global health security has never been more urgent. Building resilience requires more than strong health systems—it depends on effective governance, sustainable financing, and equitable power-sharing across the global health ecosystem.

Structural inequalities, fragmented surveillance, weak governance, and unequal access to diagnostics, treatments, vaccines, technologies, and intellectual property continue to amplify pandemic risks. Recent outbreaks, including Ebola, hantavirus, and Nipah, highlight the growing health, economic, and social consequences of emerging infectious diseases. Yet investments have not kept pace. Chronic underfunding of Pandemic Prevention, Preparedness, and Response (PPPR), reactive financing, and donor dependence undermine resilience, while delayed data sharing, political barriers to transparency, and inequitable access to medical countermeasures weaken coordinated action and trust.

Effective preparedness relies on resilient surveillance and laboratory networks, a trained health workforce, trusted risk communication, meaningful community engagement, reliable supply chains, and inclusive multisectoral governance. It also requires decision-making that gives low- and middle-income countries a stronger voice in shaping global priorities and responses.

The WHO Pandemic Agreement and its forthcoming annex on pathogen access and benefit sharing offer an important opportunity to strengthen international cooperation, improve equitable access to health technologies, and reinforce accountability. This session will explore how financing and governance can evolve to build a more resilient, equitable, and coordinated global health security architecture.