Let’s Seize the Moment to Prevent Future Pandemics

This piece comes to us from the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS). Views and opinions expressed in blog posts are those of the individuals expressing them and do not necessarily reflect those of THIRTEEN Productions LLC/The WNET Group.

More than four years after the COVID-19 pandemic emerged to claim millions of lives, the World Health Organization (WHO) has for the second time declared Mpox (formerly Monkeypox) a Public Health Emergency of International Concern after the Democratic Republic of Congo and neighboring countries reported a major increase in cases and deaths resulting from a deadlier and more transmissible strain.

The WHO’s action comes after two and a half years of negotiations among its 194 Member States to adopt a new, legally binding agreement to strengthen pandemic prevention, preparedness, and response. Having failed to reach consensus by their original deadline of May 2024, those governments now seek to reach an agreement by May 2025. Meanwhile, the riskiest human activities continue unabated, setting us on track for another pandemic.

The organization we represent, the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), took advantage of every opportunity as an official stakeholder to engage in the process. Lacking sufficient political will, the World Health Assembly—the WHO’s decision-making body—punted on an agreement, choosing to push the decision off for another year when the assembly gathers again next May.

Now it must move past its hesitation and act. If it is adopted and the language is strong enough, a new agreement will provide an unprecedented opportunity for governments to protect current and future generations from the disastrous effects of pandemics.

Although COVID-19 is no longer considered a pandemic by the WHO, we continue to see multiple resurgence waves per year across at least 84 countries that continue to impact individuals and communities. Additionally, approximately 400 million people globally are affected by long COVID, with an estimated annual economic impact of around $1 trillion, representing nearly 1 percent of the global economy.

Those cases underscore the profound ramifications of COVID on both public health and economic stability. Two additional zoonotic disease outbreaks foretell a multiple-pandemic future. In addition to Mpox, High Pathogenic Avian Influenza H5N1 continues to expand its species range and has found a novel evolutionary pool in the national US dairy cattle herds to develop new traits and infection paths.

While we agree that countries must be better prepared to respond to epidemics and pandemics, urgent and strong actions must be taken to reduce the emergence of infectious diseases at human-animal-environment interfaces in the first place. Primary prevention is the most efficient and cost-effective strategy for preventing future pandemics, yet many governments often overlook this crucial reality.

Clearly, addressing multi-host, zoonotic-origin outbreaks requires a cross-sectoral approach addressing human, animal, and ecosystem health. Such a “One Health” approach remains weak in the Proposal for the WHO Pandemic Agreement—with numerous caveats and few concrete mechanisms to prevent future zoonotic diseases from spilling over between wildlife, humans, and livestock. This is disappointing to say the least.

Negotiators should revert to earlier versions of the legal text and adopt stronger, more action-oriented provisions than what currently appears. Recognizing that at the end of the day, we are all in this together, countries must cooperate and commit to strengthening pandemic prevention and surveillance capacities.

They must develop, strengthen, implement and periodically update and review comprehensive One Health-informed, national pandemic prevention and surveillance plans that include, among other actions, efforts to protect and conserve the ecological integrity of tropical forests and to close commercial markets for live wildlife—particularly for birds and mammals— when they are not needed for the food security of local communities.

Further, governments must promote the effective and meaningful engagement of Indigenous Peoples and local communities, the first to be impacted by spillover events, in the development and implementation of policies and measures to prevent, detect, and respond to outbreaks.

Finally, if there is to be meaningful text, the WHO and its Member States must engage with external technical and scientific experts and allow civil society organizations greater access to the negotiations.

Next month, the world will convene in Colombia for the meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD CoP16). This is the first such biodiversity conference since the adoption of the landmark Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework in December 2022.

In that framework, the world’s governments agreed to 23 important targets, including an end to illegal and unsustainable wildlife use and trade, and a reduction in the risk of pathogen spillover from wildlife. CoP16 will address these important commitments, but it is disingenuous for governments to commit to action in one intergovernmental forum (the CBD) and fail to agree to similar actions in another (the WHO).

With an estimated 25 million cumulative excess deaths during COVID-19 and the WHO declaring Mpox a Public Health Emergency of International Concern, we must ask how many more millions must die before governments take the necessary action to prevent the spillover of pathogens between wildlife, people and other animals.

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