Rocky S. Tuan

Opinion | World needs universities to foster global cooperation to prevent the next pandemic

It is crucial to learn lessons from the past three years, including the importance of cooperation across borders, industries and professions, especially amid geopolitical tensions

International collaboration in scientific research must become the norm, not the exception; viruses and diseases know no geographic boundaries

Reading Time:4 minutes

Why you can trust SCMP

Researchers work in a lab at the University of Queensland, in Brisbane, Australia. Global challenges such as pandemics need global solutions. Photo: Handout

Rocky S. Tuan

Published: 3:30am, 19 Jan 2023Updated: 4:24am, 19 Jan 2023

As the latest World Health Organization (WHO) report shows, Covid-19 continues to test the limits of our healthcare systems. The lingering impact of the pandemic is a reminder that neither international regulations within the global health framework nor national legislation and health systems were prepared for such a massive epidemiological threat.

The reasons, as a WHO special envoy put it, were simple: “Insufficient preparation. Insufficient investment. Insufficient collaboration. Insufficient learning.”

Even as we wrestle with the fallout from Covid-19, it is crucial to learn from the past three years to carry out evidence-based measures to help prevent the next pandemic. This depends on several factors, including the need for international cooperation amid geopolitical tensions.

The value of international cooperation has at least been acknowledged as people understand its importance in the fight against the pandemic. But the more recent tightening of controls over cross-border cooperation is worth noting, given geopolitical tensions between, for example, China and the United States.

The 2022 Elsevier Report highlights that China and the US are the most prominent collaborators in the world, each publishing about 20 per cent of the world’s research. Nonetheless, in 2021, we saw a slight decline in joint publications between the two countries.

Former New Zealand prime minister Helen Clark prompted the partner universities of the Association of Pacific Rim Universities (APRU) to help form international public policy on pandemic preparedness, start sharing biomedical intellectual property and use social science knowledge to better protect society.