U.S. President Joe Biden allocated $1 billion in foreign aid for global health security and to bring an end to the COVID-19 pandemic in his proposed budget for 2022. Part of the funding is meant to expand pandemic preparedness efforts, including the expansion of capacity-building programs for the Global Health Security Agenda, an initiative born in 2014 during the presidency of Barack Obama.
This signals the U.S administration's intentions to revitalize the GHSA, which was launched to help the implementation of the International Health Regulations. The idea was that it would identify gaps in countries’ abilities to detect and prepare for infectious disease threats and get high-level political support in countries to address those gaps, but it suffered from reduced funding from 2018.
Some experts argue Biden’s renewed funding is not enough. GHSA needs dedicated, predictable, and sustainable financing that would allow countries to develop and implement their national health security action plans, according to Carolyn Reynolds, co-founder of the Pandemic Action Network.