Delivered 9 June 2026 to the Interactive multi-stakeholder hearing as part of the preparatory process for the high‑level meeting on pandemic prevention, preparedness and response
Watch Dr. Panjabi’s full video at this link.
Thank you, Co-Chair. Excellencies, distinguished guests, colleagues — it has been a productive day and I want to help close with a few remarks.
I am a physician and a health advocate. I am also proud to be here representing Helen Clark and the Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response.
The Panel, as you know, released its main report in 2021 — COVID-19: Make It the Last Pandemic. We meant it. That is the work that we are all here to do.
This afternoon, I invite you to come with me — to shift our imagination from this chamber to the front lines of an Ebola response. Because it is on these front lines, together with communities — as has been mentioned several times this afternoon — that we identify outbreaks and pandemic threats and stop them in their tracks.
It is also on this front line that we understand people’s fears, their bravery, and their commitment.
In 2014, I joined my fellow Liberian health workers in rural parts of Liberia, where we were faced with what is known as history’s worst Ebola outbreak. The situation was dire. Health clinics and hospitals were not seen by my patients as places to get better, but as places to die. There were no approved treatments or vaccines for that virus. There was very little testing. Their relatives could not understand why they were forbidden from holding their loved ones or preparing them for burial in the way their culture demanded.
We had to earn their trust.
At the height of the West Africa Ebola outbreak, the US CDC projected that over one million people could become infected and that many of them would die. At the height of that crisis, we were terrified.
I was terrified I would bring Ebola home to my own family, to my own children.
Now, think of a church the size of a living room. Imagine mud walls and a thatched roof. That is where we were — together with nurses and community health workers in the middle of Liberia’s rainforest — helping them learn how to safely wear the mask, the gloves, and the gowns to keep themselves safe while serving their patients. Those people were so scared. They had so many questions. All of us there knew someone who had died from Ebola — and yet they did not surrender to fear.
A foundational shift came when we mobilised and trained those community health workers to fill a deadly void with trusted information and care. Community residents learned the signs and symptoms of Ebola, teamed up with nurses and doctors to go door to door to find the sick and get people into care. Together, they boxed in the virus and helped stop it in its tracks.
Together, we learned that in a crisis, common ground is not found by forcing compliance with public health measures. It is built through shared humanity, through shared curiosity, through transparency.
Today, however — in this Ebola outbreak and in too many health emergencies since — voids of trust still exist. Too many people have no real connection to their health systems because those systems have been weakened: weakened by underinvestment, by conflict, and by debt. The bottom line is people are often left out of the response. Local people, again and again.
To truly stop outbreaks before they become epidemics, and to truly stop epidemics before they become pandemics, we need to invest in people: veterinarians and environmental workers who can stop disease from spilling over from animals to humans; community and health workers who build trust and serve as the eyes and ears that send an alert when something goes wrong — as they did in West Africa.
Now, to be sure, countries must invest in their own people and their own systems, and the international community must be prepared to fill the gaps where debt, conflict, and weak infrastructure make that impossible to do alone. Why? Because doing so makes all of us safer. Doing so makes all of us stronger.
For years now, our Panel has called for the filling of a $15 billion gap — $15 billion to be provided annually for prevention and preparedness — to help finance low- and middle-income countries, not just to invest in their people, but to ensure we are investing in life-saving products those people can use to save lives. This financing exists. We cannot give up because international development assistance is on a dangerous decline.
I want to join my friend Minister Joy Phumaphi in challenging all of us to look at other models of investment — to look at global public investment models that can incentivise the push to accelerate discovery and development of new vaccines, treatments, diagnostics, and other tools, and the pull to ensure that those tools reach all who could benefit from them. That takes public-private investment models, and we should do that.
We should make pandemic prevention, preparedness and response a global public good — because it makes our societies safer and our economies stronger.
Let us look at the current Ebola outbreak.
We know it is a terrible test run for a pandemic threat: a disease with high mortality, not identified for many weeks, no approved vaccines or treatments, limited diagnostics. Our Panel recommended a surge financing mechanism so that there is ease of mind in a crisis instead of the scramble we are now witnessing.
For this Ebola outbreak, there have been generous pledges and those should be acknowledged — but when will the money actually flow at the scale the threat demands?.
That is the question we are asking together. Those dollars are needed today, and we need a surge mechanism that is fast, reliable, and clear.
Now, in research and development, there has been a public-private investment model, and there is some genuine progress. Within days, WHO named vaccine candidates and treatment options. CEPI and Gavi made their plans very clear, because they have created a push model — with CEPI accelerating discovery and development, and Gavi committing an advanced market commitment to purchase vaccines if they are actually brought to bear and approved.
But diagnostics — the very things we need to see the threat, to make it visible — are still a gap. The current tests require electricity and trained staff, which are often in short supply in the very places pathogens spill over, often in rural areas. Therefore, we need, in this outbreak and in every outbreak, point-of-care tests that anyone can use anywhere — the kinds that we all used during COVID. We do not have them for this outbreak. We need them for this one and for future ones.
We also still do not know who will fund treatment trials or test validation. We do not know whether sufficient vaccines will reach the front lines. There are, as yet, no guarantees.
Since COVID, the World Health Organization has declared not one, not two, but three public health emergencies of international concern — two for mpox alone.
The 2014 to 2016 Ebola outbreak carried a $53 billion price tag in direct and economic costs. I remember, as so many of my fellow nurses and doctors do, that we lost one out of every ten health workers in the region.
Let me be blunt: “We cannot afford to keep responding to crises when we have the know-how to prevent them.
That is why this High-Level Meeting must commit to solutions. Commit to the finalisation of the pathogen access and benefit-sharing annex — with equity guaranteed. Commit to rapid ratification of the Pandemic Agreement — why not set a target? 100 ratifications within a year. And leaders must commit to filling the enduring gaps in financing, in equitable access, in monitoring, and in political leadership.
Every gap left unfulfilled will be paid in human lives. I have seen it with my own eyes. Every gap unfulfilled will be paid in human lives.
At the UN, we often speak of strengthening systems. But when we have crisis after crisis, let us not stop at aiming simply to strengthen — let us make these systems strong once and for all.
In the weeks ahead, my colleagues who are UN Permanent Representatives have a tough job ahead of you. This might be one of the most challenging times in recent memory to be a Permanent Representative at the United Nations. I say that with humility, because there are dangerous crises all around the world that grab the attention of your leaders and your countries, as they should. Those crises — whether they are wars or conflicts — threaten to pull us as humanity apart.
But what if we could, instead of coming apart, come together?
What if, in the face of all that danger in the world, you could be part of a political declaration that made the world safer? This is achievable and winnable in the next several weeks.
In closing, I ask you to picture yourself — not here in the UN, but in Ituri Province, in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Picture yourself and your family faced with the threat of Ebola. Then ask yourself: if you knew that people thousands of kilometres away were negotiating your future of health and safety, what would you want them to do?
There is where you will find your answer.
There is where you will find that you have the power to do exactly that.
I thank you.
About The Independent Panel
The Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response was established to provide an independent review and recommendations on global pandemic preparedness and response in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Co-chaired by former President of Liberia, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and former Prime Minister of New Zealand, Helen Clark, the Panel continues to monitor progress and advocate for strengthened global health security.
Media Contact: Secretariat@IndependentPanel.org