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Reimagining the future of pandemic PPR financing
The money must be spent in the right places and the right time -- that is to say, peacetime investment is no less important than wartime investment.
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In good health: Indonesian Health Minister talks to visiting World Health Organization director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus at the Merdeka Palace, Central Jakarta on June 21. (Antara/Presidential Secretariat Press Bureau/Muchlis )
COVID-19 has exposed huge financial gaps in pandemic prevention, preparedness and response (PPR). The World Bank (WB) and the World Health Organization (WHO) estimated at least an additional US$10.5 billion per year in international financing will be needed to cover the need of $31.1 billion annual investment for global pandemic PPR, encompassing surveillance, research and equitable access to medical countermeasures, public health and resilient communities, scalable health interventions and PPR strategy and operations.
In countries with the least fiscal space, lower-middle-income countries (LMICs) and low-income countries (LICs), the national needs for pandemic PPR are estimated at around $16.2 billion per year, for which an extra $7 billion per year in international financing will be needed (World Bank & WHO, 2022).
The intention of this article is to highlight the discussion on the following fronts: Global and national pandemic PPR financial gaps, key lessons for pandemic PPR financing, the global pandemic preparedness fund as a recent solution and recommendations for Indonesia as holder of the Group of 20 presidency.
The problem of pandemic PPR financing is much more complex than just finding resources to close the financial gaps. To understand this complexity, we capture three key lessons to better comprehend the needs of pandemic PPR financing.
First, the importance of a coordinated global collective action. Given the fragmentation of many global health initiatives (i.e. the Global Fund, GAVI, etc.), a coordinated global collective action, in terms of governance, financing and prioritizing remains imperative in increasing countries’ PPR capacity.
