By Martien Van Nieuwkop
Back in March the World Bank Group announced that it would make available a US$12 billion package, an unprecedented level of financing to help developing countries and businesses respond to the health and economic impacts caused by COVID-19. Some of that support will seek to address immediate measures designed to strengthen the global response to what is a new threat. Some of it will be preventative, focussed on learning lessons from the past and strengthening our capacity to respond before the next threat surfaces.
The COVID-19 crisis, like SARS, MERS, Ebola and the avian and swine flus before it, presents countries with a new opportunity to do the right thing and tackle some of the root causes of emerging infectious diseases: the uncontrolled risk of pathogen transmission from animals to humans in a rapidly changing environment.
