Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to work with international partners to prevent another pandemic.

The UK is a prominent and active Member State of the World Health Organisation (WHO) and member of the Group of 20 (G20) and Group of 7 (G7). We work together with international partners in these fora to tackle some of the biggest health challenges of our time to make the world a safer and healthier place, including strengthening the global health architecture for health emergencies preparedness, prevention and response. This includes a focus on tackling anti-microbial resistance, promoting the One Health approach, strengthening surveillance, discussing effective pandemic financing and the future of multilateral coordination on pandemic countermeasures, such as vaccines, diagnostics and therapeutics.

The UK works closely with the World Health Organization, which has an important role in responding to health emergencies, and uses its attendance at WHO meetings, including WHO governing body meetings, as an opportunity to work with WHO and its member states, ensuring the lessons learned from Covid-19 are applied. The UK is also actively contributing to the Intergovernmental Negotiating Body, where WHO Member States are negotiating a pandemic instrument to provide the long-term, overarching framework to tackle pandemic threats and outbreaks, and the Working Group on Amendments to the international health regulations.