(OPINION) Bill Gates has outlined proposals for a new global pandemic surveillance unit, claiming the World Health Organization currently has “less than 10 full-time people” on the lookout for deadly new viruses according to a new report from Insider.
The Microsoft co-founder was pushing countries to take the threat of a global pandemic more seriously long before COVID-19 arrived, warning viewers in a 2015 TED Talk the world was “not ready” for a deadly outbreak.
Speaking to the FT ahead of the release of his upcoming book, “How to Prevent the Next Pandemic”, Gates said his proposed “Global Epidemic Response and Mobilization” initiative should fall under the WHO’s management.
The billionaire philanthropist suggested the task force be put together to monitor global health emergencies and coordinate responses across countries. The epidemic response team could be made up of experts including computer modelers as well as epidemiologists, he said.
Prior to the outbreak of COVID-19, Gates claimed, the WHO had fewer than “10 full-time people” preparing for future outbreaks, adding that “even those people are distracted with many other activities”. “The current WHO funding is not at all serious about pandemics,” Gates told the FT.
“We’re still at risk of this pandemic generating a variant that would be even more transmissive and even more fatal,” he added. “It’s not likely, I don’t want to be a voice of doom and gloom, but it’s way above a 5 percent risk that this pandemic, we haven’t even seen the worst of it.”
Gates said that more funding was needed to prevent future pandemics: “It seems wild to me that we could fail to look at this tragedy and not, on behalf of the citizens of the world, make these investments.
“We’re still at risk of this pandemic generating a variant that would be even more transmissive and even more fatal.” The WHO has been the subject of scrutiny since COVID-19 began causing havoc around the world at the start of 2020, with critics arguing the body didn’t do enough to warn the world how dangerous the virus was early on.
