Read online: https://hq_who_departmentofcommunications.cmail19.com/t/d-e-gudykkd-hldd...
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NEWS RELEASE, 18 May
The world is on the edge of even greater pandemic damage
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 report emphasizes that the real, near term risk of another pandemic would strike a world more divided, more indebted and less able to protect its people than it was a decade ago, exposing all countries to potentially greater health, social and economic impacts...
“If trust and cooperation continue to fracture, every country will be more exposed when the next pandemic strikes. Preparedness is not only a technical challenge — it is a test of political leadership” said GPMB Co-Chair Joy Phumaphi...
The report concludes by highlighting that that leadership will be tested this year, as governments work to finalize the WHO Pandemic Agreement and to agree a meaningful United Nations political declaration on pandemic prevention, preparedness and response.
The 2026 GPMB report is launching today in the margins of the 79th World Health Assembly...
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COMMENT (NPW): There is an urgent need to strengthen evidence-informed policymaking. Who would have predicted that one of the greatest threats to global health is the emergence of political leaders who ignore science?
Best wishes, Neil
HIFA profile: Neil Pakenham-Walsh is coordinator of HIFA (Healthcare Information For All), a global health community that brings all stakeholders together around the shared goal of universal access to reliable healthcare information. HIFA has 20,000 members in 180 countries, interacting in four languages and representing all parts of the global evidence ecosystem. HIFA is administered by Global Healthcare Information Network, a UK-based nonprofit in official relations with the World Health Organization. Email: neil@hifa.org