Global Preparedness Monitoring Board says pandemic risks are rising faster than global preparedness, while trust, equity and international cooperation continue to erode
By Vivek Bhavsar | Editor-in-Chief, TheNews21
New Delhi: Six years after COVID-19 reshaped the modern world, an alarming new report linked to the World Health Organization and the World Bank has concluded that the world is not safer from pandemics — and may in fact be more vulnerable than before. The 2026 report of the Global Preparedness Monitoring Board (GPMB), titled A World on the Edge: Priorities for a Pandemic-Resilient Future, delivers one of the bluntest official assessments of the post-COVID global order.
Its conclusion is stark : “Reforms have not kept pace with rising pandemic risk — the world is not yet meaningfully safer.”
The report argues that while scientific and technological capabilities have advanced rapidly since COVID-19, the political, institutional and social foundations required to manage future crises have weakened considerably. In perhaps the most consequential observation of the report, the Board warns that the greatest casualty of the post-pandemic era has been the collapse of trust and equity. “The greatest and most consequential casualty of these trends has been the profound erosion of trust and equity.”
The GPMB was established in 2018 after the devastating West African Ebola epidemic to independently assess global preparedness for health emergencies. Since then, the world has witnessed six major Public Health Emergencies of International Concern (PHEICs), including COVID-19, Ebola outbreaks, Zika and mpox. According to the report, those emergencies have exposed a dangerous reality: infectious disease outbreaks are becoming more frequent, more disruptive and more politically destabilising. The report repeatedly stresses that pandemic preparedness is no longer merely a medical or technical challenge. Instead, it has become deeply entangled with geopolitics, economic fragmentation, democratic decline, misinformation, public distrust and rising inequality.
The Board notes that despite billions spent after COVID-19 on preparedness initiatives, overall development assistance for health has now fallen back to levels last seen in 2009. Even more troubling, the report suggests that global equity in access to vaccines and medical countermeasures is worsening rather than improving. During the recent mpox outbreaks, vaccines reportedly took between 24 and 27 months to reach affected low-income countries — slower than the 17 months required for COVID-19 vaccines during the pandemic.
The report describes this phenomenon as “equity fatigue” — a growing unwillingness among governments and institutions to politically prioritize equitable access to life-saving treatments once the immediate crisis subsides. One of the report’s strongest sections examines how pandemics are increasingly affecting democratic institutions themselves. From Ebola to COVID-19, governments across the world relied on emergency powers, movement restrictions, border closures and extraordinary public health measures. The report says many of these political and institutional consequences have persisted long after the health emergencies ended.
The Board specifically warns that trust in governments has declined, polarisation has intensified, attacks on scientific institutions have increased, and democratic norms have weakened in several countries. By 2024, according to the report, several global indicators related to democracy, civil liberties and institutional trust had still not returned to pre-pandemic levels.
In a striking political observation, the report says, “The main barriers to PPR are no longer only capacity gaps — they are also the barriers to collective action and political economy challenges that only political leaders can resolve.”
The report also highlights the paradox of the modern era: the world is technologically better equipped than ever before, but socially and politically more fragile. Artificial intelligence, genomic surveillance and rapid vaccine technologies offer unprecedented capabilities for outbreak detection and response. However, the Board warns that without proper governance and safeguards, AI and digital systems could actually deepen global inequality and weaken health security further.
The report repeatedly refers to the modern world as a “VUCA” environment — volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous — shaped by climate change, geopolitical fragmentation, armed conflict, economic stress and rapidly evolving information ecosystems.
Against this backdrop, the Board proposes three major priorities for the next decade: creation of an independent pandemic-risk monitoring mechanism, legally enforceable equitable access to vaccines and treatments through the WHO Pandemic Agreement, and permanent financing mechanisms capable of funding immediate “Day Zero” responses before outbreaks spiral into global crises.
The report’s conclusion carries a warning that extends far beyond global health. It suggests the next pandemic may not become catastrophic because science failed, but because politics, trust and international cooperation failed. As governments prepare for negotiations around the WHO Pandemic Agreement and the 79th World Health Assembly in Geneva, the report effectively raises a larger question confronting the international system:
Has the world truly learned from COVID-19 — or merely survived it?
