As United Nations Member States prepare for the 2026 High-Level Meeting on Pandemic Prevention, Preparedness and Response, one essential question remains largely absent from discussions: how can we prevent a local zoonotic disease infection from becoming an outbreak, and ultimately a pandemic?
This Open letter initiated by PREZODE has been signed by 130 experts from more than 50 countries as of June 29, 2026.
International attention too often focuses on responding to crises once they are already visible. Yet recent history shows that pandemics do not emerge suddenly. They are generally preceded by multiple pathogen spillover events between the environment, animals, and humans, sometimes occurring repeatedly over many years before a pathogen acquires the ability to sustain transmission among people.
HIV, the coronaviruses responsible for SARS, MERS, and COVID-19, avian influenza, Mpox, Rift Valley fever, Ebola, and hantaviruses have all followed this trajectory. Long before becoming global threats, these diseases appeared as localized outbreaks and sporadic cases involving repeated transmission between animals and humans.
The recent cluster of hantavirus infections detected in South America and the ongoing Ebola outbreak in Central Africa are unlikely to signal the next pandemic. However, they serve as important reminders: such events are not anomalies. They are early warning signals that our health systems should be able to detect, understand, and address long before they become unmanageable.
Yet the world continues to underinvest in these first lines of defense and in preventing risks at their source.
In many countries, particularly low- and middle-income countries, rural communities, field veterinarians, community health workers, ecologists, local laboratories, and surveillance networks are the first to observe changes in ecosystems, unusual animal deaths, suspected cases, or shifts in human behavior that increase the risk of disease emergence. They are on the front lines, able to reduce risks, implement preventive measures, and contain spread from the very first cases.
These actors also generate epidemiological intelligence of immense value to the entire world. The data, biological samples, ecological knowledge, social, cultural and economic practices, and epidemiological information they produce are essential for risk assessment, vaccine development, diagnostic tools, and preparedness strategies at the international level.
Yet these systems remain chronically underfunded.
The COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated that investing in coronavirus research, surveillance, and understanding before a global crisis emerged significantly accelerated vaccine development. Likewise, decades of influenza virus surveillance in wild and domestic birds have strengthened global preparedness for influenza pandemics such as H1N1.
Prevention does not begin in hospitals. It begins in villages, farms, markets, forests, wetlands, and the territories where interactions among humans, animals, and ecosystems are rapidly evolving.
This is the ambition of the One Health approach, which recognizes the interdependence of human, animal, and ecosystem health, as well as the critical role of communities in managing and preserving these systems. Yet despite repeated governmental commitments to One Health, including at the One Health Summit held in Lyon last April, financing continues to prioritize crisis response rather than prevention. Resources devoted to early risk detection, integrated and community-based surveillance, and strengthening veterinary services remain far below what is required given the human, social, and economic costs of pandemics.
This issue lies at the heart of current discussions on the Pathogen Access and Benefit- Sharing (PABS) system under the Annex to the International Pandemic Agreement adopted by WHO Member States in 2025. While rapid sharing of data and biological samples is indispensable, equity also requires recognizing the value of the systems that detect pathogens in the first place and generate the essential upstream information needed to develop effective control measures.
Countries, primarily low- and middle-income countries, and the communities carrying out this frontline work should not be viewed merely as providers of data or samples. They should benefit from sustainable investments that strengthen their prevention capacities, laboratories, multisectoral surveillance systems, and research networks. Prevention at source is among the most cost-effective investments in global health security. It not only reduces pandemic risks but also protects biodiversity, improves food security, strengthens rural livelihoods, and enhances resilience to climate change.
As the United Nations High-Level Meeting on pandemics approaches, Member States have a historic opportunity to address a major weakness in global health governance. If they truly wish to prevent future pandemics rather than simply respond more effectively to them, they must make prevention at source a political and financial priority. This requires sustained investment in national veterinary services, One Health surveillance systems, including community-based surveillance, laboratory and sequencing capacities, and data-sharing mechanisms. It also requires supporting regional scientific networks and recognizing the central role of communities in risk reduction, early detection, and rapid response to emerging threats. Repeated transmission events between animals and humans are not isolated incidents. They are the earliest warnings of a pandemic risk in the making.
The world can no longer afford to wait for the next crisis before taking action.
We call on United Nations Member States to explicitly include in the future Political Declaration on Pandemics a strengthened commitment to prevention at source, the One Health approach, and community-based surveillance.
We also call on them to mobilize ambitious and sustainable financing to support the communities, scientists, veterinarians, health and environmental services, and surveillance networks that constitute the first line of defense against Ebola, hantaviruses, and future pandemics.
Global health security begins where diseases emerge. That is where we must invest.
Authors: Marisa Peyre, Co-founder of PREZODE and Deputy Director of UMR ASTRE, CIRAD; Papa Seck, Former President of PREZODE and former One Health Adviser to the Presidency of Senegal; Servane Baufumé, Public Policy Expert, CIRAD; Chadia Wannous, One Health Officer, World Organisation for Animal Health, WOAH.