The Pandemic Fund, together with Rwanda and Armenia, convened world leaders on the margins of the 2026 United Nations General Assembly.
NEW YORK – The Pandemic Fund warns that pandemic preparedness should be treated as a continuous investment rather than an emergency expense by building strong systems needed to confront pandemics long before the first case appears.
During one of the sessions at the margins of the ongoing 81st United Nations General Assembly, Rwanda and Armenia converged governments and development partners to examine how countries can turn pandemic commitments into concrete investments before another crisis arrives.
For Rwanda, the argument is grounded in experience. The country helped shape the Pandemic Fund and chaired its governing board until June this year. Its own preparedness was then tested by its first Marburg outbreak in 2024.
Prime Minister Dr. Justin Nsengiyumva said the experience demonstrated the value of systems built before an emergency.
“When the Marburg outbreak began in 2024, Rwanda was fortunate to have systems involving community health workers, surveillance networks, laboratories, and hospitals, that could be turned towards responding to a new threat within days,” he said.
Prime Minister Dr. Justin Nsengiyumva addressing delegates at the 81st United Nations General Assembly.
More than 9.5 million people were screened by community health workers during the outbreak, and Rwanda brought the outbreak under control within three months.
The lesson, according to the Prime Minister, was that preparedness should not mean maintaining a specialized system that only becomes useful during a crisis.
“Our system had not been organized around this particular threat, but it had been built to do the ordinary work of keeping a population healthy, and that is precisely why it could be turned towards an unfamiliar one,” he said.
Preparedness, basing of Rwanda’s experience, was not a specialized capability held in reserve for emergencies. It was the everyday strength of a health system, available on the day it was needed.
Financing before the crisis
That principle is the basis of the Pandemic Fund’s model. Executive Head Priya Basu said countries cannot wait for an outbreak to create the urgency needed to strengthen their systems.
The Fund was established after COVID-19 as a dedicated multilateral financing mechanism for pandemic prevention, preparedness and response in low- and middle-income countries.
Its first three funding rounds have awarded $1.4 billion in grants across 67 projects covering 128 countries. Basu said those grants have helped catalyze more than $10 billion in additional domestic and international resources.
“Preparedness cannot be built in the moment of crisis. It has to be built before the crisis. The aim is therefore not simply to provide grants, but to use them to unlock larger investments by governments and development partners,” Basu said.
For Rwanda, Pandemic Fund support is helping strengthen health systems and establish a National Veterinary Reference Laboratory, which Nsengiyumva said will help detect zoonotic diseases faster and reduce reliance on testing abroad.
Preparing for a threat that has no timetable
World Bank Group Managing Director and Chief Knowledge Officer Pascal Donohue said the case for preparedness extends beyond health.
“COVID-19 demonstrated how a pandemic can also become a development crisis by reversing years of economic and social progress. A strong health system is the same system that can detect and respond to an outbreak,” he said.
The World Bank is working with countries on primary healthcare, regional manufacturing, emergency financing and response capacity.
Armenia’s Health Minister Anahit Avanesyan, whose country worked with Rwanda to facilitate the intergovernmental process ahead of the UN high-level gathering, said the challenge is turning political commitments into sustained action.
For Rwanda, that means making preparedness part of normal national planning and budgeting rather than something governments revisit only during emergencies.
“The next threat may emerge anywhere. We will not know in advance what pathogen it will be, where it will appear, or how fast it will move. What we can determine in advance is whether the systems it encounters are ready,” Nsengiyumva said.
What remains to be seen is whether and how countries will invest in preparedness while there is still time to prepare, rather or wait until the next outbreak creates a tragedy.
