Stronger trade systems for better global health security

COVID-19 is a forerunner of more, and possibly worse, pandemics to come. Scientists have repeatedly warned that without greatly strengthened proactive strategies, global health threats will emerge more oft en, spread more rapidly, and take more lives. Together with the world’s dwindling biodiversity and climate crisis, to which they are inextricably linked, infectious disease threats represent the primary international challenge of our times. Recognizing this new reality of a pandemic era is not fearmongering but rather prudent public policy and responsible politics. We must organize ourselves on a whole-of-society basis within nations and rethink how we collaborate internationally to mitigate its profound consequences for livelihoods, social cohesion, and global order.

Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Th arman Shanmugaratnam, and Lawrence H. Summers, 2021

Trade in medical goods and services has been an essential weapon in the battle against the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. During the fi rst two years of the pandemic, suppliers stepped up global shipments of therapeutics, vaccines, diagnostic gear, and personal protective equipment. Barriers to the movement of goods, people, and technology, however, hampered that eff ort.

Th is experience shows that the world must be better prepared for the next pandemic that will inevitably arrive and that could be even more severe. Global public health security—which the World Health Organization (WHO) defi nes as “the activities required, both proactive and reactive, to minimize the danger and impact of acute public health events that endanger people’s health across geographical regions and international boundaries”—must be improved.