Former New Zealand Prime Minister and pandemic preparedness expert Helen Clark has warned that recent Ebola and hantavirus outbreaks have exposed serious gaps in the world's ability to detect health threats early, despite improvements in emergency response systems after Covid-19.
Speaking to AFP in Geneva on Tuesday, Clark said the global response to public health emergencies has become more organised and faster over the past few years. However, she stressed that countries are still struggling with surveillance, risk assessment and early detection.
“The new international health regulations are working,” said Clark, who co-chairs the Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response.
Referring to the recent Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo and the hantavirus outbreak linked to the MV Hondius cruise ship in the Atlantic, Clark said authorities reacted quickly once alerts were issued.
Clark said the bigger concern is how such outbreaks continue spreading before being identified. “Our issue is now really upstream from that,” she said, adding that more work is needed to understand how “these outbreaks get away”.
Calling for stronger “risk-informed preparedness”, Clark urged governments and health agencies to focus more on identifying possible threats in advance and preparing for them before they escalate.
“I think we need a lot more knowledge around risk-informed preparedness,” she said, stressing the importance of understanding “what could crop up” and being “ready to deal with that”.
“Those basic issues of surveillance, early detection... We're not there yet,” Clark warned.
The hantavirus outbreak on the cruise ship, which reportedly caused three deaths, has raised concerns because the virus is already known to exist in the part of Argentina where the ship started its journey.
“But we're not clear how much was known about that by ships who depart regularly from there,” Clark said.
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She also questioned how the Bundibugyo strain of Ebola was able to spread for weeks in a remote province of Congo without being correctly identified.
“How could this have gone for four to six weeks, ... spreading while not getting the testing results that we needed to show that it was a particular variant?” she asked.
Clark described the situation as a “perfect storm”, warning that global aid cuts and reduced donor funding are weakening healthcare systems in vulnerable countries. She added that “global solidarity remains extremely important” in preventing future pandemics.
“We're talking global public goods,” Clark said, warning that infectious diseases can quickly cross borders, as seen with a confirmed Ebola case involving a US citizen and hantavirus cases reported in locations where cruise ship passengers had disembarked.
Stressing the need for collective action, she added, “We're in this together, and so we have to look to ways of financing preparedness or response which reflect our shared interests.”
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