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2d ago

Global Council Warns Inequality Fuels Pandemics, Urges G20 to Act

The council defines true health security as the social conditions that prevent outbreaks from taking hold.

The failure to tackle inequality exacerbates pandemics, which in turn exacerbate inequality, in an inequality-pandemics cycle. (Image: iStock)
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Overview

  • The UNAIDS‑convened Global Council released its report ahead of this month’s G20 leaders’ meetings in Johannesburg, calling for immediate policy shifts.
  • The two‑year study concludes that inequality makes pandemics deadlier, longer and costlier, and that outbreaks in turn deepen inequality across diseases including COVID‑19, AIDS, Ebola, influenza and mpox.
  • Led by Joseph Stiglitz, Monica Geingos and Michael Marmot, the council urges debt standstills and automatic crisis financing to create fiscal space for responses.
  • It recommends scaling social protection, funding regional production and technology sharing, including IP waivers during declared pandemics, and directing resources to community‑led responses.
  • The report notes COVID‑19 pushed about 165 million people into poverty as the richest increased their wealth by more than a quarter, and says new outbreaks and recent HIV prevention drug approvals highlight the urgency.