The World Health Organization (WHO) must be strengthened with more funding and greater ability to investigate pandemics through a new treaty, an independent panel has said, ahead of a conference of health ministers next week.
Efforts to end the Covid-19 pandemic have been uneven and fragmented, marked by limited access to vaccines in low-income countries while the "healthy and wealthy" in rich countries get boosters, the high-level experts said in their latest review.
The panel co-chairs - former New Zealand prime minister Helen Clark and former Liberian president Ellen Johnson Sirleaf - reiterated a call for urgent reforms.