G7 warned world remains unprepared for pandemics

The world is as ill-prepared for a global pandemic as it was before the Ebola outbreak, aid organisation Médecins Sans Frontières has warned after the G7 meeting in Bavaria.

Leaders meeting at Elmau castle in Bavaria on Monday pledged a "financial facility" within the World Bank to tackle pandemics, but committed no funds.

Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) suggested world leaders’ “lip service” showed they had learned nothing from their bungled response to the Ebola pandemic that claimed 11,000 lives since last year, mostly in sub-Saharan Africa.

"Once again entire communities and villages will be left to die until it risks spreading to the West and only then will these leaders decide to take action," said Dr Joanne Liu, international president of MSF.

NGOs watching the G7 wanted leaders to fund a new initiative – ideally within the World Health Organisation (WHO) – to offer swift, universal and practical medical care in affected countries. A co-ordinated response to Ebola only began when it had reached a stage of being an issue of international security.

“Only when Ebola travels from Africa to Europe do we wake up, but for now we still have nothing to respond in place,” said Samantha Bolton of MSF in Geneva.

Lack of joined-up thinking

As well as a lack of institutional backup, aid organisations complain of a lack of joined-up thinking on pandemic response in existing development aid structures.

Even after the Ebola crisis, many countries are unwilling to admit a major outbreak because of the negative consequences for tourism, trade and their progress in meeting global development targets.

Without incentives to concede a problem, aid groups say potential pandemics will be identified and tackled too late.

Another health issue on the G7 agenda was the fight against diseases resistant to bacteria. According to the WHO, more than a fifth of all new cases of tuberculosis are resistant to existing antibiotic treatment. MSF estimates that tuberculosis is now killing more people worldwide in two days than the entire death toll in the Ebola outbreak.

“Millions of people suffer from disease . . . because they don’t represent a lucrative market for the pharmaceutical industry,” said Philipp Frisch of MSF’s Access Campaign.

He welcomed a G7 commitment to boost needs-driven research but, apart from Britain, leaders had failed to “put their money where their mouth is”, leaving unfunded the task of researching cures for diseases resistant to existing treatments.