By Jennifer Rigby
    LONDON, May 18 (Reuters) - The world is no better prepared
for a new pandemic than it was when coronavirus emerged in 2019
and may actually be in a worse place given the economic toll,
according to a panel set up by the World Health Organization
(WHO) to evaluate the global response. 
    A lack of progress on reforms such as international health
regulations means the world is as vulnerable as ever, the
Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response said in
its report.
    The authors, led by former New Zealand prime minister Helen
Clark and former president of Liberia Ellen Johnson Sirleaf,
acknowledged some progress, including on more robust funding for
the WHO, but said the process was going far too slowly.
            
    "We have right now the very same tools and the same system
that existed in December 2019 to respond to a pandemic threat.
And those tools just weren't good enough," Clark told reporters.
    "If there were a new pandemic threat this year, next year,
or the year after at least, we will be largely in the same place
... maybe worse, given the tight fiscal space of many, if not
most, countries right now." 
    Wednesday's report comes ahead of next week's World Health
Assembly in Geneva, the WHO's annual decision-making forum,
which is expected to address some of the issues raised. 
    While the body welcomed some steps forward, including moves
to establish a separate global health security fund within the
World Bank, it warned that global interest was waning and the
years it will take to set up other instruments – including a
potential pandemic treaty, an international agreement to improve
preparedness - were too long.              
    The panel called for a high-level meeting at the U.N.
General Assembly and independent health threats council led by
heads-of-state to galvanize action.  
    "Only the highest-level political leadership has the
legitimacy to bring multiple sectors together in this way,"
Sirleaf said in a statement.

 (Reporting by Jennifer Rigby;
Editing by Alison Williams and Angus MacSwan)