Global Collaboration Is The Only Way To Manage Pandemic Threats

21 January 2025

• A US exit from the World Health Organization will undermine the capacity of the US and the world to be prepared and able to respond to health emergencies
• A Statement from the RH Helen Clark and HE Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the Co-Chairs of The Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response

We see the intent of the United States to withdraw from the World Health Organization (WHO) as a grave error – which will put Americans at greater risk of outbreaks, death and economic losses both from within and outside the US.

A pandemic, by its very definition, spares no country and incurs enormous and lasting costs to human lives, livelihoods and economies in the billions and trillions of dollars.

Through global collaboration, with the World Health Organization at the hub, pandemic threats can be quickly identified, and measures can be recommended to stop them in their tracks.

Since the COVID-19 emergency that led to an estimated 27 million excess deaths including the deaths of some 1.2 million Americans, countries have come together to find new ways to collaborate and help to ensure that new pathogens are identified and reported rapidly, and that tools like tests and vaccines are shared strategically and equitably to address outbreaks at their source. This effectively makes every country safer.

Every country in the world can be the source of a new pandemic threat. Currently, the H5N1 highly pathogenic avian influenza virus circulating in hundreds of herds of dairy cattle in the United States and in flocks of wild and domestic birds is seen as a risk to the health of Americans and to people everywhere. One single mutation could trigger a fatal type of influenza that would spread at speed from person-to-person and signal the start of a new pandemic that would be deadlier and costlier than any outbreak seen in modern history. So far, the response to H5N1 in the United States has been inadequate. If efforts are not accelerated, the US could be the source of a new pandemic.

When a country exits the World Health Organization, it abandons shared responsibility for preparedness and response to a pandemic threat. It also loses critical influence at the WHO to help to make the organization even stronger and a more effective gatherer of information and distiller of advice.

When The Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response reviewed the international response to COVID-19 in 2020-2021, including the role of WHO, it found that if anything, WHO should be more predictably and sustainably funded. It recommended stronger International Health Regulations (IHRs) that would lead to faster and more forceful reporting of outbreaks. The Independent Panel believes the IHRs as amended in 2024, fully implemented, can offer that to every country of the world.

We urge that the United States remain in the WHO, to ensure a stronger WHO, and that American experts working in the Organization, and around the world, remain fully engaged in global pandemic preparedness and response. That is what will keep Americans, and the world safer from pandemic threats. Working effectively together is the only way to beat invisible pathogens that will infect anyone, anywhere, and continue until they have nowhere else to go.

About The Independent Panel

The Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response spent eight months rigorously reviewing various dimensions of the COVID-19 pandemic. In May 2021 the Co-Chairs, the RH Helen Clark and HE Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, submitted their evidence-based landmark report entitled COVID-19: Make it the Last Pandemic to the World Health Assembly. They made recommendations which, taken as a package, could transform the international system in a way that could make it the last pandemic of such devastation.

The Independent Panel Co-Chairs, several members and advisors continue to advocate for implementation of the full package of recommendations due to concerns about the failure to implement recommendations of past high-level reviews of major outbreaks. Their interest is to see a fit-for-purpose, transformed, and effective international system for pandemic preparedness and response. They continue to do this work because of the serious implications of lack of transformative change being made.

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