John Nkengasong

John Nkengasong is a Cameroonian-American virologist and global health leader who was the founding Director of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention and later served as U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator leading PEPFAR. He is currently Executive Director for Higher Education, Collaboratives, and Strategic Initiatives at the Mastercard Foundation.

Pandemic Preparedness Is Being Built and Dismantled at Once

At Aspen Ideas: Health, Blythe Adamson, Ashish Jha, John Nkengasong and Jessica Malaty Rivera argued that the world is still not ready for the next fast-moving infectious threat, even as WHO members negotiate the first legally binding pandemic agreement. Their case was that preparedness now depends as much on early detection, engineered-biology safeguards, regional response capacity, trusted communication and global financing as on vaccines and stockpiles — and that several of those systems are being weakened at the same time they are supposed to be built.

The Aspen InstituteJun 25, 202620 min read