Global Health Security Index
Biological threats—natural, intentional, or accidental—in any country can pose risks to global health, international security, and the worldwide economy. Because infectious diseases know no borders, all countries must prioritize and exercise the capabilities required to prevent, detect, and rapidly respond to public health emergencies. Every country also must be transparent about its capabilities to assure neighbors it can stop an outbreak from becoming an international catastrophe. In turn, global leaders and international organizations bear a collective responsibility for developing and maintaining robust global capability to counter infectious disease threats. This capability includes ensuring that financing is available to fill gaps in epidemic and pandemic preparedness. These steps will save lives and achieve a safer and more secure world.
The Global Health Security (GHS) Index is the first comprehensive assessment and benchmarking of health security and related capabilities across the 195 countries that make up the States Parties to the International Health Regulations. The GHS Index is a project of the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI) and the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security (JHU) and was developed with The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU). These organizations believe that, over time, the GHS Index will spur measurable changes in national health security and improve international capability to address one of the world’s most omnipresent risks: infectious disease outbreaks that can lead to international epidemics and pandemics.
The GHS Index is intended to be a key resource in the face of increasing risks of high-consequence and globally catastrophic4 biological events and in light of major gaps in international financing for preparedness. These risks are magnified by a rapidly changing and interconnected world; increasing political instability; urbanization; climate change; and rapid technology advances that make it easier, cheaper, and faster to create and engineer pathogens.
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The Global Health Security Index
The first comprehensive assessment of global health security capabilities in 195 countries.
2021 GHS Index: Advancing Collective Action and Accountability Amid Global Crisis
Despite significant steps taken by countries to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic, all countries remain dangerously unprepared to meet future epidemic and pandemic threats.
Investing in Global Health Security: How to Build a Fund for Pandemic Preparedness in 2022
On April 21, 2022, immediately after G20 finance ministers and central bank governors reached consensus to establish a new Fund for preparedness at the World Bank, a group of leading experts and stakeholders from governments, civil society, academia, and multilateral institutions working in global health, global health security, and biodefense met to review progress and offer advice on next steps. This paper, published jointly by NTI and the Pandemic Action Network, aims to inform next steps to structure, approve, and launch a new Fund, including the forthcoming consultative process led by the World Bank.