A World on the Edge: 2026 Report and Analytics

Report

The 2026 GPMB report, A World on the Edge: Priorities for a Pandemic‑Resilient Future, finds that as infectious disease outbreaks become more frequent they are also becoming more damaging, with widening health, economic, political and social impacts, and less capacity to recover from them.

This report uses the GPMB Monitoring Framework to assess how the impacts of the six new Public Health Emergencies of International Concern (PHEICs) of the past decade have evolved and identifies the areas where they are now most acute.

To rebuild trust and advance equity, the world requires independent pandemic risk monitoring, equitable access to countermeasures, and sustainable financing, enabled by sustained political attention.

Analytics

This evidence review found in the annex, Monitoring the impacts of PHEICs over the past decade: evidence, analysis and insights, underpins the GPMB’s 2026 findings and recommendations. It looks across a decade of major health emergencies to assess whether the world is becoming more resilient to their impacts — or more vulnerable.

Using the GPMB Monitoring Framework, the analysis brings together data and evidence from global databases, national reports, peer-reviewed studies, institutional reviews and grey literature. It identifies where trends are improving, worsening or unclear, helping to inform the Board’s conclusions on the state of global preparedness and the priorities for future action.