Revive the pandemic slogan: No one is safe until everyone is safe

The world must pool resources for those who need them most as a matter of enlightened self-interest

- NADIA CALVIÑO & SANIA NISHTAR

The covid crisis taught the world fundamental lessons about the importance of global cooperation to fight disease. But that cooperation is under strain, as are the conditions needed to sustain it.

Future funding for health and science is being called into question, and cuts to development assistance by some traditional donors are casting doubt on our ability to prevent and respond to infectious diseases in the world's most fragile countries.

To ensure future resilience to pandemics, these gaps must be filled. The key to success lies in strong, innovative new partnerships between multinational organizations, private- and public-sector institutions and civil society.

We already know from recent experience that strong global partnerships work. Five years ago, we managed to overcome vaccine nationalism (the hoarding of limited supplies) in formulating the global response to covid.

Gavi, a global alliance of public, private and civil-society groups, partnered with the European Investment Bank Group, which is the financing arm of the European Union, owned by its 27 member states, to mobilize €600 million ($720 million) in donor funding toward the Covax initiative.

Without this funding, Covax would not have been able to move at the speed and scale that ultimately delivered nearly two billion vaccine doses.

More than 100 (mainly) developing countries benefited because we had the foresight to respond to the pandemic cooperatively.