Rt Hon Esther McVey
MP for Tatton and co-chair of the APPG on Pandemic Response and Recovery
The All-Party Parliamentary Group on Pandemic Response and Recovery (APPG) was set up in September 2021 to examine the impact of Covid-19 pandemic policy and response by the UK Government, advisers and health and regulatory authorities.
In the aftermath of Covid-19, claims by the global health community that more frequent and deadlier pandemics are an increasing and existential threat, regardless of age and underlying health, have gathered momentum. The resulting pandemic prevention, preparedness and response agenda (PPPR) — devised and promoted by the World Health Organization (WHO), G20 and the World Bank — is directing the focus of global health policy towards that perceived threat, but does the evidence support the claims?
Flaws identified in preparedness
Learning of the ‘REevaluating the Pandemic Preparedness And REsponse (REPPARE)’ project of the University of Leeds, the APPG asked Professor Garrett Wallace Brown, Chair of Global Health Policy at the University of Leeds and Dr David Bell, a clinical and public health physician with a PhD in population health, to speak to the Group about their team’s findings.
Having commenced in July 2023, analysis has identified a number of flaws in the PPPR evidence base. This policy brief highlights ‘a lack of accurate PPPR cost estimations’ and ‘highly unreliable assumptions of outbreak risk’ among others, making five recommendations.
In 2023, malaria cases increased
by 11 million from 263 million
estimated cases in 2022.
Pandemic costs strain health efforts
Setting aside concerns about the reliability of assessments of the frequency and impact of pandemics, the report cautions projected costs, such as a $31.1B total annual price tag including $26.4B per year from low, middle and upper middle-income countries, could further impact health efforts already disrupted by the official Covid response, to control and eliminate malaria and other high-burden infectious diseases. It is unclear if The Pandemic Fund will offset such costs.
Indeed, according to the WHO’s World Malaria Report 2024 since 2020, the number of malaria cases has increased steadily after remaining stable between 2000 and 2019. In 2023, malaria cases increased by 11 million from 263 million estimated cases in 2022.
Pandemic preparedness diverts resources
Pandemic preparedness is diverting scarce resources from higher-burden health priorities like malaria and nutrition, threatening global health resilience and incurring significant opportunity costs. More importantly, in the fog of pandemic preparedness, we must not lose sight of the internationally defined understanding of health: the physical, mental and social wellbeing and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.
