Ahead of next week’s high-level meetings at the UN General Assembly, Carolyn Reynolds, cofounder of Pandemic Action Network, warns that other international crises are weakening global efforts to strengthen pandemic preparedness and response after COVID-19. To overcome that “pandemic amnesia,” she calls for world leaders to fully and sustainably support the Pandemic Fund at its $10.5 billion annual funding target, agree on a pandemic accord with accountability mechanisms, and establish a global pandemic countermeasures mechanism to ensure equitable access to lifesaving drugs and vaccines.
Our next contributor, Karl Hofmann, president and CEO of Population Services International, addresses the controversies created by the anti-abortion movement’s demands concerning the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR). He argues that those demands threaten PEPFAR and the safe abortion services that his organization provides through resources not appropriated by Congress. He notes that Population Services International complies with all U.S. laws and regulations concerning U.S. foreign assistance, but those rules “do not constrain American nongovernmental organizations such as PSI from doing what is legal with other people’s money.”
David P. Fidler, senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations, closes out the week’s contributions by analyzing the summit of the Group of Twenty’s (G20) in New Delhi. To the surprise of many, the G20 reached consensus on a political declaration early in the summit. The New Delhi declaration includes global health issues, but Fidler argues that the declaration’s significance is that it “reflects India’s attempt to elevate itself as a global, nonaligned power that champions a development agenda for low- and middle-income countries” in the Global South.
As always, thank you for reading.—Thomas J. Bollyky, Editor
