A statement from the Co-Convenors of the Friends of the PPPR High-Level Meeting
June 2026
As Member States open negotiations on the political declaration for the UN high-level meeting on Pandemic Prevention, Preparedness and Response, the message from Friends of the PPPR HLM is: take this opportunity to make bold, concrete and measurable commitments to make the world safer. Every Member State has a stake in this. No country can do it alone.
The Bundibugyo Ebola outbreak shows us the consequences of delayed action. This outbreak is a real-world test of the world’s pandemic prevention, preparedness and response system. As the test clearly demonstrates, it is not good enough.
The Ebola outbreak illustrates precisely what strong PPPR commitments would change.
A genuine One Health approach to prevention — integrating human, animal and environmental health — would have increased the chance of identifying the animal host and preventing this outbreak altogether.
Sustained investment in prevention and preparedness, including in surveillance, could have identified it earlier, closer to the source, and given communities and policymakers a chance to stop it before it cost hundreds of lives and required hundreds of millions of dollars in response.
A clear, effective surge financing mechanism — one the world still does not have — would mean that when an outbreak strikes, funds flow immediately to where they are needed, without conditions that slow disbursement and without fragmentation across mechanisms that leaves frontline responders waiting.
And guaranteed access to medical countermeasures, in addition to forward-looking R&D for vaccines, treatments, and diagnostics, must be built into the system now – not negotiated when people’s lives are at stake. There are no approved countermeasures for Ebola Bundibugyo. And while there is promising science on vaccines and treatments, there are no access guarantees, no clarity on purchase financing, and no protection against high-income country stockpiling. The outbreak also highlights the severe underinvestment in diagnostics.
The compilation of early Member State feedback on the zero draft of the political declaration shows that the core problems are well known — financing gaps, fragmentation, zoonotic spillover risk, and the challenge of implementing One Health, whole-of-government and whole-of-society approaches in practice.
But recognizing the problems is not enough. Member States must set out the bold, measurable commitments needed to solve them.
Sustained political leadership is essential. Member States are calling for coordination, but naming no one responsible for delivering it. The Friends have called for a high-level leaders’ group to hold the PPPR agenda accountable until the Pandemic Agreement enters into force.
The cycle of panic and neglect has a sadly familiar pattern. It is what produced this Ebola emergency. Left unaddressed, it is what will produce the next pandemic.
We call on Member States to end this cycle now, and chart a measurable path for pandemic prevention, preparedness and response that will make us all safer.