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GENEVA — On the margins of the 79th World Health Assembly this week, global health dignitaries, policymakers, and medical experts convened for a pivotal strategic roundtable. The high-level session marked the tenth anniversary of the World Health Organization (WHO) Health Emergencies Programme (WHE). Created in 2016 in the wake of the devastating West African Ebola epidemic, the WHE was designed to give the WHO operational teeth to respond rapidly to disease outbreaks and humanitarian crises. A decade later, the roundtable served as a profound moment of reckoning, forcing leaders to look through the lens of COVID-19 to evaluate whether the world is truly safer from the next unavoidable pathogen.
Opening the session, Dr. Chikwe Ihekweazu, WHE’s Executive Director, highlighted that the programme’s evolution has been continuously forged in the fires of successive global emergencies. WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus described the COVID-19 pandemic as the “ultimate stress test”—a crisis that exposed deep, systemic fractures in global preparedness, resource equity, and public trust, even as it catalyzed unprecedented scientific innovation and cross-border collaboration.
From Reactivity to Proactivity: Shifting the Global Health Paradigm
For decades, global health infrastructure has expanded by looking backward. Dr. Mike Ryan, Former Executive Director of the WHE, provided critical historical context during the panel, noting that global health systems have historically evolved reactively. Major structural overhauls have almost always occurred in the immediate aftermath of staggering crises, such as the 2003 SARS outbreak, the 2014–2016 Ebola epidemic, and most recently, COVID-19.
Public health experts argue that this “panic-and-neglect” cycle is the greatest vulnerability in global health security. When a threat emerges, funding and political will skyrocket; once the immediate danger recedes, attention shifts, and budgets are slashed. The consensus at the roundtable was absolute: global health systems must break this cycle and adapt proactively to identify and contain threats before they trigger the next global lockdown.
Three Pillars of Transformation
To achieve a proactive stance, the roundtable experts outlined three critical areas of systemic transformation: data intelligence, sustainable financing, and equitable access to countermeasures.
1. Epidemic Intelligence and Artificial Intelligence
Professor Johanna Hanefeld of the Robert Koch Institute emphasized that the world has entered a new era of “epidemic intelligence.” While advanced analytics and artificial intelligence (AI) now allow epidemiologists to model disease spread and detect unusual clusters of illness faster than ever before, technology alone is insufficient.
“Advanced data tools are only as good as the foundational national health systems feeding them data,” noted Dr. Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, who was not involved in the roundtable. “If a local clinic lacks the diagnostic tests to identify a novel virus, or if the public does not trust health authorities enough to report symptoms, the most sophisticated AI in the world remains blind.”
2. Breaking the Cycle of ‘Reactive’ Funding
Public health infrastructure cannot survive on emergency handouts. Dr. Daniela Garone, International Medical Coordinator for Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders), issued a stark warning regarding the current state of global health financing. Relying on reactive funding—money unlocked only after an emergency is declared—severely limits effective day-to-day preparedness and baseline surveillance. Sustainable, flexible, and predictable financing is required so that low- and middle-income nations can maintain resilient healthcare systems during peacetime.
3. Equitable Access to Medical Countermeasures
The scientific achievements of the COVID-19 pandemic were historic, yielding highly effective vaccines in under a year. However, the distribution of those tools highlighted severe global inequities. Dr. John-Arne Røttingen, CEO of the Wellcome Trust, championed an “end-to-end” approach to medical countermeasures. He argued that scientific discovery, clinical trials, manufacturing, and distribution must be treated as a single, unified pipeline designed from the outset to guarantee equitable, global access, rather than letting wealthy nations monopolize supply.
National Realities: Lessons from the Ground
While high-level discussions often feel abstract, country perspectives shared at the roundtable demonstrated how these hard-won lessons look in practice.
In East Africa, the realities of the pandemic forced rapid, permanent upgrades. Dr. Mekdes Daba Feyssa, Ethiopia’s Minister of Health, detailed how the crisis compelled the nation to make substantial, long-term investments in its health infrastructure. Ethiopia rapidly expanded its molecular laboratory networks, built robust medical oxygen production systems, and scaled up its specialized healthcare workforce. These advancements did not just help manage COVID-19; they fundamentally strengthened the country’s capacity to contain subsequent localized outbreaks of cholera and measles.
Meanwhile, the Central African Republic demonstrated how political accountability can merge with grassroots health initiatives. Minister of Health Dr. Pierre Somsé highlighted the implementation of the Universal Health and Preparedness Review (UHPR). The UHPR is a voluntary, member-state-led mechanism where countries review their own pandemic readiness. Dr. Somsé explained that by aligning technical expertise, high-level political commitment, and community-level leadership, the nation has successfully improved its baseline outbreak detection and response.
The Path Forward: Unfinished Business
The roundtable concluded with a sobering reminder: while significant progress has been made through updates to the International Health Regulations (IHR) and the ongoing drafting of the global Pandemic Agreement, critical gaps remain.
Chief among these is finalizing the Pathogen Access and Benefit-Sharing (PABS) system. The PABS system is a highly contested legal framework intended to ensure that when developing countries share genetic data about dangerous local pathogens, they are legally guaranteed fair access to the resulting vaccines, diagnostics, and treatments developed by international pharmaceutical firms.
The political gridlock surrounding this agreement highlights a lingering tension between commercial intellectual property interests and global public health safety. The challenge moving forward into the next decade of emergency management is clear: global leaders must translate the devastating lessons of the past decade into sustained financial investment and genuinely equitable international laws.
For the general public, these high-level negotiations carry direct consequences. A well-funded, legally binding global health framework means faster detection of overseas threats, fewer disruptions to global supply chains, and more rapid, equitable access to therapeutics and vaccines at the local pharmacy. The true measure of the WHE’s next decade will not be how well it responds to the next disaster, but how effectively it prevents one from starting.
References
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Organizational Sources:
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World Health Organization (WHO). (2026). Health Emergencies Programme: 10-Year Review and Strategic Roundtable. Seventy-ninth World Health Assembly Briefing Papers.
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Medical Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and should not be considered medical advice. Always consult with qualified healthcare professionals before making any health-related decisions or changes to your treatment plan. The information presented here is based on current research and expert opinions, which may evolve as new evidence emerges.
