Overview
- The UNAIDS-convened Global Council on Inequality, AIDS and Pandemics released research identifying a self-reinforcing inequality–pandemic cycle.
- The report finds that high inequality makes outbreaks more disruptive, deadlier and longer-lasting, while pandemics in turn worsen inequality.
- Authors led by Joseph Stiglitz, Monica Geingos and Sir Michael Marmot urge debt relief and other steps to create fiscal space, warning that austerity undermines health, education and social protection.
- Recommendations include scaling social protection, funding regional production and technology transfer, and issuing immediate intellectual property waivers once a pandemic is declared.
- The findings are being positioned for the G20 meetings in South Africa this month, with Stiglitz set to brief leaders as health ministers gather and new outbreaks of avian flu and mpox are reported.