the right way to plan for the next pandemic

Opinion: The World Health Assembly (the governing body of the World Health Organization) meets this week with an agenda asking us how we will collectively cope with a future pandemic, drawing lessons from what happened after a previously unknown virus – Covid-19 – an ill-prepared world.

If member states adopt a pandemic agreement, it will be the first time a health treaty has been negotiated since member states agreed on it 2003 Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. Those negotiations lasted four years, so it is remarkable that so much progress has been made on the pandemic treaty in just two years. But it is urgent: a pandemic could strike at any time.