The Road Ahead for CDC And GHSA

None of the 195 member nations party to the International Health Regulations (IHR 2005) are fully prepared for the next pandemic.

This was the finding of the 2019 Global Health Security Index, a project by the Nuclear Threat Initiative and the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security in collaboration with The Economist Intelligence Unit. Just months later in 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated the cost of being unprepared.

The COVID-19 pandemic highlights the urgent need for the world to come together as a global community to strengthen capabilities to prevent, detect, and respond to global health threats.

A world without global health security is a world still vulnerable to infectious disease threats. CDC continues to make critical investments in global health security capacity. These investments help save lives and money and move us toward the goal of self-sufficiency for countries around the world in the prevention, detection, and rapid and effective response to emerging infectious disease threats. To achieve this goal, CDC will build on its foundation of technical expertise to assist countries to expand and improve their own disease surveillance systems, laboratory systems, workforce development, and emergency management and response capacities. Global health security is critical, but requires long, hard work and many partnerships and collaborations in the face of growing and emerging threats. The gains we have made thus far are real and tangible, and so are the threats, whether an Ebola outbreak or a resurgence of measles cases or the spread of a novel coronavirus. Our global health security accomplishments are fragile and require sustained effort and coordination as well as continued investments from multiple partners to maintain and improve.

CDC remains committed to advancing global health security, including through the next phase of GHSA – “GHSA 2024 pdf ” – and through the U.S. Global Health Security Strategy.