UN calls for stronger global pandemic preparedness after COVID-19 lessons

The United Nations is pressing countries to turn the lessons of COVID-19 into permanent improvements in global health preparedness, warning that the next major outbreak will test whether governments have converted political commitments into practical capacity.

The call came during the United Nations General Assembly’s high-level meeting on pandemic prevention, preparedness and response, held on September 25 at UN Headquarters in New York. The meeting focused on strengthening international cooperation, health systems and equitable access to the tools needed to confront future public health emergencies.

From pandemic lessons to permanent preparedness

In a message delivered by UN Deputy Secretary-General Amina J. Mohammed, Secretary-General António Guterres stressed that the COVID-19 crisis had demonstrated the limits of national approaches to a global health emergency.

The central challenge now, he argued, is to transform the experience of the pandemic into lasting preparedness rather than temporary measures activated only when an outbreak is already spreading.

That means strengthening health systems, supporting frontline and community health workers, improving scientific capacity and ensuring that countries can detect and respond to emerging threats before they become international crises.

The UN high-level meeting was designed precisely to renew political commitment to these objectives. Its theme placed particular emphasis on multilateral cooperation, solidarity and equity.

Ebola highlights continuing vulnerabilities

The urgency of the discussion is underscored by the ongoing Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

The World Health Organization reported on September 25 that the outbreak had expanded to 63 health zones across seven provinces. As of September 23, the country had recorded 7,890 confirmed cases and 3,799 deaths, according to WHO figures.

The outbreak illustrates why surveillance, laboratory capacity, rapid detection and well-equipped health workers remain central to pandemic preparedness.

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has also highlighted the importance of community engagement and frontline response efforts in containing the epidemic.

The next phase of the global pandemic framework

Since the first UN high-level meeting on pandemic preparedness in 2023, governments have taken several steps to strengthen the international health architecture.

Among them are amendments to the International Health Regulations and the adoption of the WHO Pandemic Agreement in 2025. The agreement is intended to provide a stronger framework for cooperation before and during future pandemics.

However, a major component of that framework remains under negotiation.

The Pathogen Access and Benefit-Sharing system, known as PABS, is designed to establish rules for the rapid and equitable sharing of pathogens and genetic sequence information with pandemic potential, while ensuring that benefits such as vaccines, medicines and diagnostics are shared fairly.

WHO member states advanced negotiations on the PABS annex during their eighth working-group meeting in Geneva in September. The outcome is expected to be submitted to the World Health Assembly for consideration in May 2027, or potentially earlier through a special session.

Financing remains a central challenge

For the UN, preparedness cannot depend solely on emergency funding released after a crisis begins.

Guterres has called for predictable and sustainable investment in health systems, particularly at the community level. Such systems play a critical role in identifying unusual health events, monitoring transmission and helping contain outbreaks.

The UN has also identified persistent weaknesses in surveillance, laboratory infrastructure, health-system capacity and financing. Its background assessment for the 2026 meeting noted that fragmented funding and unequal access to medical products continue to complicate global preparedness.

Health security extends beyond human health

Another priority highlighted in the pandemic preparedness debate is the “One Health” approach, which connects human health with animal and environmental health.

The approach reflects the fact that infectious diseases can emerge at the intersection of people, animals and ecosystems. Strengthening preparedness therefore requires cooperation across different scientific and institutional sectors rather than treating human health as an isolated field.

Equitable access is another key element. The experience of COVID-19 demonstrated how differences in access to vaccines, diagnostics, treatments and other medical tools can shape the impact of a global health emergency.

Keeping COVID-19 in the collective memory

UN General Assembly President Khalilur Rahman also warned against allowing the experience of COVID-19 to fade from public memory.

In his remarks at the September 25 meeting, Rahman recalled the human losses, overwhelmed health services, disrupted economies and closed schools that marked the pandemic. He argued that these experiences should be examined to determine what worked, what failed and what needs to change before another major outbreak occurs.

The lesson, in this view, is that pandemic preparedness must be incorporated into ordinary health systems rather than treated as a temporary emergency programme.

Reliable data, trained health professionals and access to vaccines, diagnostics and treatments are therefore part of everyday health security as well as emergency response.

A test of international cooperation

The UN meeting comes at a point when governments have strengthened parts of the global pandemic framework but still face unresolved questions over financing, implementation and equitable access.

The recent progress on the WHO Pandemic Agreement provides a legal foundation, while the ongoing PABS negotiations remain important for putting some of its mechanisms into operation. WHO says the PABS annex is intended to enable timely sharing of pathogen materials and sequence information while linking that access to equitable sharing of benefits.

For the United Nations and WHO, the objective is therefore broader than preparing for one particular disease. It is about building health systems and international mechanisms capable of responding to a range of future threats.

The COVID-19 pandemic exposed the consequences of being unprepared. The current challenge is to ensure that the next global outbreak finds countries with stronger surveillance, better-equipped health systems, more reliable financing and mechanisms for cooperation already in place.