For the past ten months, former Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and I have been Co-Chairs of the Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response, set up in response to a call from the World Health Assembly.

The report of our Panel will be launched next week, and we are reaching out to those who are potential champions of reforms which could stop a future infectious disease outbreak becoming a pandemic.

It was therefore a pleasure to speak this week with leaders who are very engaged on the need to improve global pandemic preparedness & response. As Cyril Ramaphosa said, “It is the virus that causes the disease, but it is human action & inaction that causes a pandemic”. See the statement on our roundtable with leaders: https://theindependentpanel.org/heads-of-state-and.../

Watch out for the release of our report next week!