G20 to consider plans to create pandemic fighting fund Plans for a multibillion-dollar emergency fund to tackle future pandemics will be floated at the Group of 20 summit of major economies this weekend, as world leaders are urged to learn lessons from the Ebola outbreak ravaging west Africa. The failure to co-ordinate a global response in the early stages of the Ebola outbreak led to criticism of international agencies and allowed the virus to rapidly spread in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. Jim Yong Kim, World Bank president, will tell world leaders and finance ministers in Brisbane that the international community must be ready for future infectious disease outbreaks that might prove deadlier and faster-moving than Ebola. He will argue that, while international institutions have shown their ability to quickly extinguish financial crises, there are fewer tools to tackle pandemics that could pose just as big a threat to the global economy. Timothy Evans, senior director of health, nutrition and population at the World Bank, said donors had been too slow to respond to the Ebola outbreak. "From a financial perspective it's been a case of passing the hat around rather than, "here's what you need, go!"," he said. We cannot afford that laxity when faced with a pandemic. Mr Kim floated the idea of a "pandemic emergency facility" at the annual meetings of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund last month but the G20 summit represents his first opportunity to sell the proposal to world leaders. Dr Evans said governments had already registered "strong interest" in the idea. Funding would be used for three main purposes: development of drugs, vaccines and diagnostic tests; mobilisation of a multinational "reserve corps" of healthcare workers; and support for "command and control" logistics capabilities. It would be similar to the Central Emergency Response Fund set up by the UN in 2005 to finance rapid relief after natural disasters and armed conflicts. Its recent grants have ranged from typhoon clean-up in the Philippines to aid for war-torn South Sudan. So far the World Bank has committed roughly $1bn to Ebola but has had to scramble to reallocate resources in the absence of a dedicated pandemic fund. Dr Evans said that, after a slow start, there were signs that the international response together with improved grassroots efforts from local governments were beginning to make progress. Describing his findings from a recent visit to Liberia, he said: "Compared with August and September there has been a massive change. Not because things are suddenly so good but because things were so bad. New Ebola cases have begun to decline in Liberia - the country with the highest number so far - spurring cautious optimism that some of the gloomier projections for the outbreak will prove unfounded. According to the latest World Health Organisation estimates, there have been 14,098 cases and 5,160 deaths since the virus was first reported in Guinea in March. This makes it by far the worst outbreak since Ebola was discovered in 1976 but remains far short of a September prediction from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that, in a worst-case scenario, there could be 1.4m cases by January. Dr Evans said he was increasingly confident the outbreak was "not taking this worst-case trajectory." But added: "The worst thing for the global community would be to step back and raise the victory flag because there's still the possibility of resurgence. Paradoxically you have to drive harder as case numbers decline to get all the way to zero cases. Incidence has continued rising in Guinea and, particularly, in Sierra Leone and social and economic life remains badly disrupted across the region, with schools closed, industrial facilities shut down and infrastructure projects halted. Dr Evans said far more people were likely to have died as a result of the breakdown in normal health services than have died from Ebola itself, citing the closure of hospital maternity wards and disruption to childhood vaccination programmes. He said the international community must rally to support a region that, before the outbreak, had been showing growing economic potential. We have to get to zero cases because as long as there is a risk of Ebola, investors will run in the other direction.