Preparing for global health emergencies must extend beyond the traditional remit of health ministries and be built into wider economic and national security planning, President Dr Irfaan Ali of Guyana told delegates at a high-level United Nations forum in New York on Tuesday. Speaking at a side event held on the margins of the 81st session of the UN General Assembly, Dr Ali argued that the weaknesses exposed by the COVID-19 pandemic point to the need for a coordinated approach spanning multiple sectors of government.

The session, held under the theme "Two Regions, One Future" and convened jointly by Guyana and South Africa with support from the Pan American Health Organisation and the UN Foundation, brought together heads of state, health ministers and financing institutions from Africa and the Americas. It formed part of a broader week of discussions ahead of the UN's second high-level meeting on pandemic prevention, preparedness and response, scheduled for later in the week.

Dr Ali told the gathering that pandemic prevention cannot be left to health authorities working in isolation. He pointed to agriculture, finance and logistics as sectors that must be drawn into planning if governments are to build defences capable of withstanding a future outbreak. Ministries responsible for trade and infrastructure, he suggested, have as much bearing on a country's ability to respond to a health emergency as its hospitals and laboratories do.

His remarks drew heavily on the experience of the COVID-19 pandemic, which he described as having exposed structural fragilities running through international health networks. Supply chains for medical equipment faltered, border closures disrupted economies with little warning, and health systems in smaller states struggled to absorb sudden surges in demand. According to Dr Ali, these were not failures confined to the health sector but symptoms of a wider lack of coordination between government departments that rarely work together in ordinary times.

The president warned that without proactive planning, a health event confined to one region risks escalating into a shock felt across the global economy. He cited the disruption to trade and travel during the pandemic as evidence that health security and economic security cannot be treated as separate concerns. A weakness in one area, he said, quickly becomes a weakness in the other.

On the question of resilience, Dr Ali emphasised the role of cross-industry cooperation in preventing local health infrastructure from buckling under acute pressure. He argued that when finance, logistics and health planning operate together, governments gain the fiscal room needed to invest in long-term upgrades to their health systems rather than relying on emergency spending once a crisis has already taken hold. Strategic allocation of resources, in his view, allows states to prepare in advance rather than react after the fact, a distinction he said had been largely absent during the early stages of the pandemic.

Several other leaders addressed the same panel, including President Évariste Ndayishimiye of Burundi, who also chairs the African Union, and representatives of the Caribbean Community. Their contributions reflected a shared concern that funding for pandemic preparedness has slowed since the acute phase of the pandemic passed, even as new health threats, including mpox and avian influenza outbreaks, have continued to emerge. Officials from the Pan American Health Organisation and Africa CDC also spoke, underlining the case for closer cooperation between Africa and the Americas on financing preparedness measures.

Dr Ali's central argument, that health emergencies should be understood as economic and security concerns rather than isolated medical events, is likely to feature prominently in discussions at the UN's forthcoming high-level meeting on pandemic prevention. That gathering is expected to assess progress made since the first such meeting in 2023 and to seek renewed political commitments from member states at a time when global financing for health preparedness faces competing pressures from other priorities.

Whether governments translate that framing into changes to how they structure their own ministries and budgets remains to be seen. For now, Dr Ali's address adds his voice to a growing number of leaders arguing that the next pandemic, whenever it arrives, will test more than a country's hospitals.

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