Financing global health security: estimating the costs of pandemic preparedness in Global Fund eligible countries

This analysis argues that investments to build country-level capacities in health security are critical to ensure that the global community is better poised to prevent, detect and respond to outbreaks. The COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated that the world was not well prepared to respond to an infectious disease threat of this magnitude. Countries across all socioeconomic and development categories have struggled to implement effective national responses. Substantial amounts of additional investment are required to support the development of country capacities to prevent, detect and respond to both existing and emerging infectious disease threats.

Prior research efforts have estimated that between US$96 and $204 billion is required, globally, to advance country-level health security capacities, with US$63–131 billion needed over a 3-year period. Given the substantial costs of ongoing COVID-19 response, estimated to be over US$12.5 trillion through 2024, and an estimated 12.1–22.7 million excess deaths, globally, due to COVID-19 as of January 2022, the importance and potential return on investment of such upfront investments in capacity building are more evident than ever before. This work emphasises a role for targeted, action-based cost estimation to identify gaps and to inform strategic investment decisions in global health.