With the help of a “pandemic pact”, the group of seven large industrialized countries (G7) wants to be able to identify and combat outbreaks of infection more quickly in the future.

Under the German presidency, the health ministers decided on Friday in Berlin to set up an international network of experts for this purpose.

The Pact for Pandemic Preparedness is intended to serve as a precaution and also to set up an early warning system so that mass infections do not spread in the first place.

Christian Geinitz

Business correspondent in Berlin

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Federal Minister of Health Karl Lauterbach (SPD) cited the better monitoring of new pathogens, the rapid development of drugs and vaccines and a coordinated strategy for the use of protective clothing or steps such as travel restrictions as examples: “This is the best money you can invest because the costs of the Pandemic are huge in human and financial terms.”

Commitment to the criticized WHO

The new Center for Pandemic and Epidemic Education of the World Health Organization in Berlin serves as the hub for the pact.

All available data should come together there and be used better and faster.

"We have to reckon with a constantly increasing risk of a pandemic in the coming decades," warned Lauterbach, also due to climate change.

The G-7 meeting made a commitment to the WHO, which had come under fire for allegedly being too pro-China and underfunded.

The ministers believe that the organization has an essential role to play in the health of humanity, which is why it needs to be strengthened financially.

In the long term, the G-7 countries want to halve their compulsory contributions to the WHO.

The group also decided that their healthcare systems must be greenhouse gas neutral by 2050.

As a large industry, they emitted a lot of greenhouse gases.

There was also a commitment to fighting the "silent pandemic" of growing antibiotic resistance more vigorously.

More than a million people die directly from it each year.

Ineffective or missing antibiotic treatments often lead to blood poisoning (sepsis), which costs eleven million lives every year.

Therefore, one wants to promote the research and development of new substances and improve their use.

There should be national targets for this by the end of 2023.

They also want to improve the diagnosis and treatment of sepsis.

The G7 condemned Russia's war of aggression in Ukraine.

Hundreds of clinics and other health facilities were attacked, and staff were often expelled.

The ministers pledged to support Ukraine and help it rebuild.