The Covid pandemic was an equivocator with global unity – to misquote the porter in Macbeth. We were united in being affected by the pandemic but both its effects and the responses to it were grossly unequal. More, inequality worsens pandemics, not only current pandemics such as Aids and Covid but those yet to come.
Governments are looking to address one side of this equivocation through their negotiations on a pandemic accord that will be discussed during the UN general assembly in New York this month. Such a development is welcome and much needed. It is the other side, inequality, that is missing from the draft pandemic treaty and from governments’ pandemic preparedness plans. If lessons are learned, the next pandemic can be made less tragic in its effects.
