Is the world ready for the next pandemic?
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Al Jazeera Podcasts. Today, is the world united enough and prepared enough for the next worldwide outbreak? We have therefore made the assessment that COVID-19 can be characterized as a pandemic. Five years since the COVID-19 global pandemic was declared, what have we learned and what haven't we learned? I'm Kevin Hurtin, and this is The Take.

My name is Drew Ambrose. I work as a correspondent and senior producer for the programs unit. And I've just completed a series called Flatten the Curve, which is about pandemic preparedness. Drew, the series is called Flatten the Curve. And in it, you speak about how

In a lot of ways, we got lucky with COVID. It didn't affect children as intensely. There were no sort of pus-filled sores on people's faces. And there was already this wealth of research into coronavirus, which gave us this head start. Now, five years on,

it feels like we're in a very different picture. We're seeing an influx of diseases, mpox, avian flu, even this unexplained disease in Congo. A deadly unknown illness has killed about 53 people in northwestern DR Congo in just five weeks, with the doctors warning that it is spreading fast and has a high fatality rate. Drew, are you worried we won't be as lucky the next time around?

Oh, absolutely. And I think, you know, the examples that you mentioned illustrate that. Since the pandemic, you know, these outbreaks in Africa, it's been so slow for people

well-resourced countries to provide countries like the Democratic Republic of Congo with medicines to deal with the crisis and what's going to happen when we have this disease with the capacity to spread rapidly. So many planes go in and out of West Africa from Europe. You know, we are so connected as a planet and what I really do fear is we are slow to intervene in one of these outbreaks and

And, you know, a pandemic occurs again and, you know, it does hurt young children or it's harder to contain than COVID-19. So absolutely, I am very concerned as a citizen of our planet. Yeah. Which of these diseases keeps you up at night? MPOCs, avian flu, the mystery disease in Congo?

Well, you know, as a child, I watched Outbreak with Dustin Hoffman and it gave me a bit of a fear of monkeys. In a remote African jungle, a small monkey is captured. Bound for a pet store in America, the animal carries a deadly virus. Ah, gosh!

We've got to find that monkey. Yeah, well, I mean, so to connect to that, I do think I'm quite afraid of zoonotic diseases. Based on official testimony, it was, you know, the animal market in Wuhan, China, which was ground zero for the disease. I think after doing this series, I think that our ability to contain zoonotic diseases and deal with the problems which drive zoonotic diseases is

they are still so prevalent, like deforestation, animal trafficking. You know, increasingly humans are interacting with wild animals more and more, whether they, you know, trade them as pets or go into the forest and hunt them. Like we haven't changed our behaviours when it comes to, you know, protecting the environment. So for me, you know, zoonotic diseases account for a huge number of the outbreaks. And I do believe this mysterious disease in the Democratic Republic

public of Congo could be tied to, you know, bushmeat consumption. And I saw it firsthand when I went to Madagascar, just how many locals still eat wild animals. And yeah, that is probably the disease that still keeps me up at night. That monkey from outbaked, but more broadly zoonotic diseases.

I want to talk about two issues with the COVID vaccines that you explored in your reporting. One is vaccine inequity. The other is vaccine hesitancy. So let's start with inequity. What we saw from COVID-19 outbreak was that there was this mass vaccine disparity, especially in African nations. You started the series in Senegal. What does that inequity look like and why does it exist?

Well, what shocked me before I even embarked on this series, I don't want to bombard you with stats, Kevin, but the one that really did stand out to me before embarking on the series was a quarter of the world's population at the time I filmed that documentary still hadn't received a single jab for COVID-19. Wow. And that kind of shows the inequity in the vast majority of countries.

are like Senegal and other global South nations. So I do think when it comes to the distribution of vaccines, we do struggle with this issue of vaccine inequity, and that is what it is called. It is a terrible, terrible thing. It's the product of, you know, more powerful nations hoarding vaccine supplies and...

saying, they're ours, having the power to do so. And, you know, a lot of the countries that do get left behind are the Congos, are the West African nations, which are incredibly disease prone, like so many things from Ebola virus to Marburg. You know, when we look at these really horrible diseases that do emerge...

They tend to come from the African continent. And by and large, it was countries like Madagascar, Senegal that were at the end of the queue when it came to vaccine distribution. So that's what we're talking very simple terms. That is vaccine inequity. What does fuel vaccine inequity is there's just not the financial imperative to give these nations the medicines that they need.

Is there any way to calculate the true cost of this inequity? How many people died because they didn't have access to vaccines?

Yeah, I mean, based on some of the data, more than a million died as a result of the slow rollout of vaccines in parts of the world. When you look at South Africa, Mexico, some of those big countries with densely populated cities and a large proportion of the population still being elderly, it did have an impact. There's no doubt about that. And the research supports that.

So eventually, COVID vaccine does become available in most places. The inequity problems become less salient. But here comes the next issue, which is that a lot of people just don't want it. This is what we mean when we say vaccine hesitancy. And you spoke to Moussa, a fisherman in Senegal who has not been vaccinated. What did he tell you about why he made that choice? At the very beginning of the pandemic, he wanted a vaccine.

And as time rolled on, he started listening to some of the media online that you would perhaps call fake news, misinformation, sometimes disinformation, you know, content created on purpose to stop people taking medicines. And he kind of came to the conclusion that all around him, he hadn't seen too many people in Senegal who had got

sick from COVID-19. So he felt, I don't need to take the vaccine. That was his justification. And in some ways, his observations are true. Like West Africa did quite well because the population is largely young. But what really concerned me after speaking to Musa, the fisherman, was just, he just was very apathetic.

And you know why? We rely on God to protect us. We haven't seen anyone around us affected by the disease or killed by COVID. So it's difficult to convince us the disease really exists.

Just a general disregard for the importance of medicine and as we discussed earlier, Africa is incredibly disease prone. If, you know, if there's lackadaisical or like

apathy towards taking vaccines, that behavior will continue. And for me, when I kind of heard his story, it made me fearful because I thought he's probably going to ignore other medical interventions out there if another outbreak does occur. So that was my concern. We'll have more with Drew after a break.

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So, Drew, thinking about today, vaccine hesitancy is still a major issue. Your series has reporting from Senegal and also in France, so the global south and the global north, which is great because we get to see how people can come to the same conclusion, but from very different points of view. How would you compare what informs some of that vaccine skepticism from both of those different angles? How is it different? How is it similar?

Like, I mean, when we went to France, we did choose to interview people. They look like everyday people. They came from fields where you would go, this is an educated person. I mean, I think a lot of the vaccine hesitancy in France comes down to reading a lot of misinformation. You know, there's a lot of radio hosts and journalists

uh media figures that have a very niche audience but all together they get together on social media platforms and kind of support each other's views and in some ways it's incredibly dangerous

France, you know, you would say it is the birthplace of vaccines as well. Like, you know, some of the rabies vaccine, I believe, was created in France. So what I was trying to do was show a country where there has been this kind of very traditional respect for medicine and suddenly there's a huge cohort of people supported through protests, through social media participation, who now kind of completely either

disregard the vaccines or feel hesitant to be the first people to take them. I do think, though, that another thing was, you know, these like harsh responses that we saw during COVID-19 or these crackdowns, like a lot of these vaccine hesitant people or vaccine sceptical people saw it as a conspiracy where the government was creating these diseases to control the population.

But what I do think is it is also tied to this kind of notion that, you know, a mass vaccination program is a form of government control. And that in itself is quite worrying. Kevin, another thing that was really quite startling when I was in Senegal was there was this dominant view amongst Filipinos

and fishermen that these diseases and these vaccines both were designed to wipe out the African population. It was seen as a conspiracy, you know, and it was done on purpose. And that was something that I didn't really think I would encounter when I went there. Yeah, a lot of it came down to distrust. You spoke to a doctor in Senegal who said it comes down to distrust and anger at the West.

Not only fatigue, they may think that there is a financial plot behind. So the issue of who is making the profit. The colonial process was very traumatic. It is in the memory of the population. They don't trust the system. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think the slow rollout of the vaccines did fuel this hatred or this disenchantment that...

countries like America, the UK are fair. I think it did teach some African nations a horrible lesson because when you're at the back of the queue and you're not getting these vaccines, naturally resentment does grow.

Let's talk about solutions and what's being done to avoid a repeat of the inequity problems that arose during COVID. You went to Africa's first high volume vaccine manufacturing hub in Senegal, Madiba. What are they trying to do in Madiba?

Yeah, well, Mardeepa is run by the Pasteur Institute. And if you know their work, they are involved in vaccine production in Africa, essentially. And there are other countries in Africa right now that are trying to become vaccine production hubs so they don't have to depend on vaccines.

the West to get vaccines and they don't have to depend on global stockpiles. So Madiba is creating vaccines for diseases which largely affect African populations. And what they hope to do, like Madiba, which is based on the outskirts of Dakar, Senegal, is to be this hub which will produce medicines for West Africa. There are other hubs that are

emerging in, I think Rwanda is another country that has a vaccine production hub. They will service that part of Africa. So collectively, they're trying to safeguard Africa better. But more globally, right now at the World Health Organization, there is this discussion about a pandemic treaty and what

What that is trying to do is create a more equitable system where African nations get access to data and pathogens when big outbreaks occur so they can produce medicines and other interventions to contain any disease outbreaks which may occur within their jurisdiction. What are the major challenges that they're facing? Well...

I mean, when you look at it as an operation, it is quite big and it is quite expensive. It involves a lot of manpower. So one scientist did say to me, it is an expensive exercise to keep it open and with

the fear that there could be a bad pandemic down the truck. It might be in 20 years' time these kind of vaccines have to keep manufacturing. So one expert at Oxford University told me, you know, it is an expensive undertaking to do this, but there is a shortage of African scientists that

are skilled in vaccine manufacturing. So you have to upskill local populations as well. There's some of the barriers that you see in starting these production hubs in Africa. Yeah. I mean, 99% of the vaccines in Africa are imported. So controlling price is a huge problem.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that comes to the heart of that very first episode of Flatten the Curve, where it is 99% is complete and utter dependence, right? And that's what these hubs hope to address. So these hubs will not just manufacture vaccines, but they do have scientists in labs that are looking for cures for certain African diseases. And I think that's very, very important.

Yeah. Dr. Michael Ryan, who is deputy director of the World Health Organization, said in the series, this isn't about charity, it's about collective security. So what is the large solution here? Paint us a picture of what a prepared world would actually look like and how far away we are from that. Well, I mean, a prepared world is...

And that is such a big question. But I do think a prepared world must not just have vaccines in production and research in production, but there needs to be more public information campaigns around the importance of these medicines to ensure that vaccine scepticism and vaccine hesitancy doesn't rise again if another big pandemic occurs. Another

important thing to factor in is disease surveillance. You know, in forests in global south countries,

is the onus on these poor countries to do that surveillance? Or does Western nations have to stump up some of the money to support these interventions which monitor animals and monitor farms and other things like veterinarians, scientists? There's a whole bunch of people that are involved in disease surveillance to stop outbreaks, particularly zoonotic disease outbreaks.

And I mean, Kevin, look, like America, you know, withdrawing from the World Health Organization is disastrous for that notion of collective security.

Everyone has to have a seat at the table, especially the really, really powerful nations like the United States. So we need a system that kind of emphasises the importance of that and doesn't just put the onus on these poor global South nations to do all the work. So that's where it needs to begin, really.

This is an anniversary episode. You've reported in many countries, as we talked about earlier, the experience and the perception of what happened five years ago varies drastically, drastically depending on where you are. I mean, country to country, city to city, even house to house. Is that one of the reasons it's so hard to come up with definitive conclusions? Because there wasn't really one pandemic. There were multitudes. And also, I think you've got to factor in that

Some of the world's biggest cities were the front lines in this disaster and it spread so rapidly. There is no corner of this planet that didn't have some alteration as a result of the pandemic. So, you know, the frustration that I see when I look at the world today is,

Have we really learnt anything? If a zoonotic outbreak did occur in a remote corner of Asia or Africa, like we've seen in the Congo, where is the intervention? Because we've seen the damage that can be caused when a disease outbreak continues its chaotic path through other countries. Yeah, the desire to forget might be our undoing next time around. Absolutely.

Okay, Drew Ambrose, thank you for coming on The Take today. You're very welcome. Thank you so much, Kevin. And that's The Take. This episode was produced by Chloe K. Lee, Ashish Malhotra, and Tamara Kandaker, with Philip Llanos, Spencer Klein, Marcos Bartolome, Amy Walters, and me, Kevin Hurtin. It was edited by Noor Wazwaz.

The Take production team is Marcos Bartolome, Sonia Bagat, Spencer Klein, Sade El-Khalili, Tamara Kandaker, Philip Llanos, Chloe K. Lee, Ashish Malhotra, Khaled Sultan, Amy Walters, and Noor Wazwaz. Our editorial interns are Melanie Mayrich, Hadjer Sela, and Hannah Shokir. I'm your host, Kevin Hurtin.

Our engagement producers are Adam Abugad and Vienna Malio. Aya Amilek is lead of audience engagement. Our sound designer is Alex Roldan. Our video editors are Hisham Abusalah and Mohanad Almelhem. Alexander Locke is the Take's executive producer and Ney Alvarez is Al Jazeera's head of audio. We'll be back tomorrow.

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