The COVID-19 pandemic was a global health catastrophe that severely set back progress towards ending global poverty. Low-income and lower-middle-income countries suffered some of the worst mortality rates, and faced the greatest financial and infrastructural challenges in terms of treating and vaccinating their populations.

Every country fell victim to COVID-19, and Australia was no exception. Our national experience exemplifies the need to assist developing countries to accelerate their recovery process, while also ensuring that we as a planet are better prepared for the next pandemic. 

Even before COVID-19 , the global health community reinforced the need to improve our responsiveness to global disease outbreaks. While developed countries with established and well-funded health infrastructure had become less susceptible to the spread of fatal infectious diseases, other parts of the world were still highly vulnerable. Consider, for example, the outbreak of Ebola in West Africa in 2014, which caused over 11,000 needless deaths. It would have only taken some small mutations in the Ebola virus for the transmission and death count to reach pandemic levels.