The world needs a pandemic preparedness and response strategy built on equitable and representative decision-making.Da Social Europe.
At their meeting in Bali in mid-July, G20 finance ministers reaffirmed their commitment to co-ordinated action to get the Covid-19 pandemic under control and better prepare for the next global health emergency. A central topic was the creation of a new financial intermediary fund (FIF) to address pandemic preparedness and response (PPR), under the trusteeship of the World Bank and with the World Health Organization playing a central technical and co-ordinating role. The goal is to close some of the annual PPR financing gap of $10.5 billion and help strengthen capacities that are critical to protecting global health, including genomic sequencing and drug manufacturing.
Over the next month, the G20, the World Bank and the WHO will finalise the FIF design, under heavy external pressure to develop an equitable and inclusive governance structure. The Indonesian G20 presidency has enabled some preliminary agreements that move in the right direction. For example, there is an emerging consensus that the FIF’s governance must include low- and middle-income countries, non-G20 partners and civil society. Moreover, G20 countries acknowledge that the FIF must build on the existing global health framework for PPR, with a central role for the WHO. This is a positive departure from the World Bank’s May 2022 White Paper, which proposed a deeply-retrograde, insular design whereby (mainly rich country) donors would make all the decisions and consult others (or not) as they chose.
