COVID-19 will not be the world’s last health emergency and there is an urgent need for sustainable health emergency preparedness to deal with the next one.

This was the strong sentiment shared by participants of the United Nations General Assembly side-event on ‘Sustainable preparedness for health security and resilience: Adopting a whole-of-society approach and breaking the “panic-then-forget” cycle’. The high-level virtual event was co-hosted by Finland, France and Indonesia, along with the World Health Organization (WHO).

Past crises have shown that once an outbreak is under control, governments and donors tend to turn their attention to other pressing concerns. This cycle of “panic-then-forget” has prevented the development of effective health emergency preparedness across the globe. The world needs to break this cycle once and for all.

This event marked a crucial dialogue among countries, donors and partners on building back better for future emergency preparedness during the current COVID-19 pandemic, and beyond. It comes on the heels of the release of a sobering report by the Global Preparedness and Monitoring Board that also called for urgent action in this area.
 
The report for the side event is now published and can be found here