Australia is being urged to invest now in vaccines, manufacturing and pandemic preparedness as one of the country’s most senior health experts warns no nation can confidently claim it is ready for the next global health emergency.

Jane Halton, chair of the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, has pointed to the rapidly escalating Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo as a stark example of why governments cannot wait until a deadly pathogen is spreading before building their defences.

“No country can say confidently that we are prepared,” Halton told 7NEWS.

Her warning comes as scientists race to find the first effective treatments specifically targeting Ebola disease caused by Bundibugyo virus, a rare form of the disease now spreading through parts of the DRC.

The outbreak has moved rapidly since it was officially declared in May.

By July 9, more than 1,700 confirmed cases and 625 deaths had been reported, according to the latest international reporting.

World Health Organization officials have also warned that the true scale of transmission may be significantly greater than the official numbers suggest.

Researchers are now running an urgent clinical trial involving experimental treatments in an effort to determine which medicines can reduce deaths.

For Halton, the scientific race in Central Africa carries a direct lesson for Australia.

“Frontline defences are actually being ready before something like this happens,” she said.

“It’s about doing the work beforehand to have vaccines ready, to actually have manufacturing ready, and to be sure that our regulators can move really quickly so we don’t all wait while people go through bureaucratic hoops.”

The message is simple but uncomfortable.

The next pandemic may not provide years of warning.

By the time hospitals begin filling and governments recognise the scale of a new threat, the most valuable preparation window may already have closed.

Ebola outbreak has already killed hundreds

The current crisis in the Democratic Republic of the Congo is being driven by Bundibugyo virus, one of the viruses capable of causing Ebola disease.

Unlike the better-known Zaire ebolavirus, there is no licensed vaccine or approved specific treatment for Bundibugyo virus disease.

That difference has left health authorities confronting a fast-moving outbreak without the same pharmaceutical tools available for some previous Ebola emergencies.

The World Health Organization said the DRC officially declared its 17th Ebola disease outbreak on May 15.

Early figures rose quickly.

By July 6, at least 1,561 confirmed cases and 506 deaths had been reported.

Within days, the official toll had climbed to 1,792 infections and 625 deaths.

The majority of cases have been concentrated in Ituri province, particularly around Bunia and other heavily affected communities.

But the outbreak has also spread into additional provinces.

A senior WHO official warned that many new patients in some of the worst-affected areas had no known epidemiological link to previously identified cases.

That suggests health teams are failing to detect significant chains of transmission.

WHO modelling has indicated the real number of infections could potentially be two to four times the officially recorded total.

The problem is not simply the biological characteristics of the virus.

Health workers are responding in areas affected by insecurity, population displacement, weak infrastructure and public distrust.

Some treatment facilities have been overwhelmed.

Frontline staff have complained about inadequate equipment and delayed payments.

Community resistance has complicated contact tracing and health workers have faced threats and attacks.

These conditions create exactly the environment in which an infectious disease can move faster than the response designed to contain it.

Scientists launch rapid trial for experimental Ebola treatments

Amid the escalating outbreak, researchers have begun enrolling patients in the PARTNERS clinical trial.

The study is seeking the first effective treatments specifically for Bundibugyo virus disease.

The trial opened enrolment in the DRC on July 2 through an international partnership involving the World Health Organization, the DRC’s National Institute of Biomedical Research, the University of Oxford and other organisations.

Researchers are testing the experimental antibody treatment MBP134 and the antiviral remdesivir.

Patients receive supportive care and are randomly assigned to receive MBP134, remdesivir, a combination of both medicines or no additional experimental treatment.

Researchers will compare outcomes to determine whether the medicines reduce mortality.

Both candidates have shown encouraging results in preclinical research, but neither has been established as an approved specific treatment for the Bundibugyo strain.

The urgency of the trial reflects the absence of proven options.

WHO has described the study as a major international effort to identify effective treatments while the outbreak is still unfolding.

More than 1,000 patients could ultimately be required for the research, although enrolment and trial expansion will depend on conditions on the ground.

A separate study is also expected to examine obeldesivir as a possible preventative treatment for people exposed to the virus.

The scientific objective is not merely to provide experimental medicines to individual patients.

Researchers need reliable evidence showing which treatment, dose or combination actually improves survival.

That distinction matters during a deadly outbreak.

A medicine that appears promising in laboratory or animal studies may not produce the same benefit in human patients.

Without properly designed clinical trials, doctors can be left using scarce medicines without knowing whether they work.

The current trial is therefore both a treatment effort and a race to generate evidence while the epidemic continues.

The world is trying to learn from COVID-19

Halton’s warning is rooted in one of the central lessons of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Governments spent enormous sums responding after a new coronavirus had already begun spreading internationally.

Countries competed for protective equipment.

Supply chains failed.

Diagnostic capacity had to be rapidly expanded.

Regulators were forced to develop accelerated processes while scientists raced to create vaccines.

Manufacturing capacity became a strategic national issue.

The world eventually produced highly effective vaccines at unprecedented speed.

But the social and economic damage accumulated while those tools were being developed and distributed.

Halton argues the objective now should be to move more of that scientific and industrial work into the period before the next emergency.

“Every time we respond to one of these situations we get faster,” she said.

“If there’s another pandemic, and we know it’s not a question sadly of if — it’s when — it actually means the response to that pandemic will be much faster than we had last time.”

The ambition is not to predict the exact virus responsible for the next pandemic.

That may be impossible.

Instead, pandemic preparedness organisations are trying to develop technologies, manufacturing systems and regulatory pathways that can be rapidly adapted when a new threat appears.

A vaccine platform that has already been tested and understood can potentially be modified for a new pathogen more quickly than a product developed entirely from the beginning.

A factory with established processes and trained staff can begin production faster than a facility that must be constructed during an emergency.

A regulator that has already planned emergency review procedures can move quickly without abandoning safety standards.

Those are the “frontline defences” Halton says must exist before the crisis.

CEPI wants vaccines ready within 100 days

The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations was launched in 2017 after the devastating West African Ebola epidemic exposed major weaknesses in the world’s ability to develop vaccines for emerging diseases.

CEPI is a global partnership that funds and coordinates vaccine and biological countermeasure development against epidemic and pandemic threats.

One of its most ambitious goals is known as the 100 Days Mission.

The objective is to compress the time required to develop a safe and effective vaccine against a newly identified pandemic threat to approximately 100 days.

COVID-19 vaccines were developed at extraordinary speed compared with historical vaccine timelines.

But even that process took long enough for the virus to spread around the world and cause enormous disruption before mass vaccination programs could begin.

CEPI believes a 100-day response could fundamentally change the trajectory of a future pandemic.

The concept relies on preparing vaccine platforms, prototype vaccines, laboratories, clinical trial systems and manufacturing capacity before a new Disease X emerges.

Disease X is not the name of a specific virus.

It is a planning concept for a serious international epidemic caused by a pathogen not yet known to cause human disease.

Preparedness for Disease X therefore requires flexible technology rather than a stockpile designed for one known virus.

Halton said the ultimate goal was to protect ordinary life, not merely improve scientific response statistics.

“We want to be ready. We want to be quick. We want to save lives and mostly we want our lives to continue as we want them, going to work, going to school, having time with family and friends,” she said.

Australia has already committed $100 million to CEPI

Australia is not starting from zero.

Official Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade information shows the Australian government has committed $100 million to CEPI for the 2023–2027 period.

The funding supports global research and development of vaccines against diseases with epidemic and pandemic potential.

Australia had also provided earlier funding to CEPI, including support during the global COVID-19 response.

Halton now wants Australia to remain part of the next international funding effort.

The United States has committed a further US$50 million to CEPI’s vaccine development work, according to the latest reporting.

For Australia, the argument for investment is partly humanitarian.

A vaccine or treatment developed against a dangerous outbreak can save lives in the country where the disease first emerges.

But the investment is also a form of national protection.

Modern infectious diseases do not respect national borders.

International aviation can move an infected person between continents before symptoms are recognised.

A pathogen spreading through an under-resourced health system overseas can become an Australian problem with extraordinary speed.

Funding outbreak science in Africa or Asia is therefore not necessarily separate from protecting Australian hospitals, schools and businesses.

The COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated the economic cost of being unprepared.

Governments spent hundreds of billions of dollars supporting economies, health systems and households after the virus spread.

Against that experience, advocates argue preventative investment should be viewed as insurance rather than foreign aid alone.

The political difficulty is that preparedness spending is easiest to question when it works.

A vaccine platform developed for a pathogen that never becomes a pandemic may appear unnecessary.

A manufacturing facility kept ready for an emergency can look expensive during ordinary years.

Stockpiles expire.

Laboratories require continuing investment.

Specialist workforces must be maintained.

But once an emergency begins, governments cannot instantly purchase years of scientific preparation.

Influenza remains one of the biggest natural pandemic threats

Halton said influenza remains among the most likely causes of a future pandemic.

Influenza viruses continually evolve and circulate in animals and humans.

Scientists closely monitor strains with the potential to acquire characteristics allowing sustained transmission between people.

The danger is familiar because the world has experienced multiple influenza pandemics.

The 1918 influenza pandemic caused catastrophic global mortality.

Later influenza pandemics occurred in 1957, 1968 and 2009.

Modern surveillance, medicine and vaccine technology have improved dramatically since 1918.

But population growth, international travel and densely connected cities create their own vulnerabilities.

A highly transmissible respiratory virus can move around the world far more quickly than Ebola, which generally requires direct contact with infected bodily fluids.

This is why pandemic preparedness cannot focus only on the pathogen currently dominating headlines.

The Ebola outbreak in the DRC is an immediate emergency.

The scientific systems built to respond to it, however, may also strengthen the world’s ability to confront a completely different disease.

Rapid clinical trial networks can be reused.

Manufacturing technology can be adapted.

Regulatory lessons can be incorporated into future emergency procedures.

Every outbreak becomes an opportunity to improve the machinery of pandemic response.

AI creates a new biosecurity concern

Halton also raised a threat that received far less public attention during the early stages of COVID-19: the possibility that future biological emergencies may involve deliberately engineered pathogens.

Advances in artificial intelligence are rapidly changing biological research.

AI systems can assist scientists in analysing proteins, designing molecules and accelerating parts of the research process.

Those capabilities have enormous potential benefits for medicine and vaccine development.

But technologies with legitimate scientific uses can also create biosecurity risks if deliberately misused.

“We have to be prepared that the next time one of these outbreaks occurs it might have been AI-designed, engineered and then of course made,” Halton said.

“It’s an uncomfortable truth that people will use the science in that way but we have to be ready.”

Her warning should not be interpreted as evidence that the current Ebola outbreak was engineered or designed using artificial intelligence.

There is no such suggestion in the reporting on the DRC outbreak.

The concern is prospective.

As biotechnology and artificial intelligence become more capable, pandemic planning must consider both naturally emerging pathogens and deliberate biological threats.

CEPI itself has increasingly recognised the intersection between pandemic preparedness and biosecurity.

The organisation introduced a dedicated biosecurity function and has incorporated biological risk considerations into its work.

Its latest progress reporting also describes research involving AI-designed antigens as part of efforts to accelerate vaccine responses.

This creates a technological race with two sides.

The same computational capabilities that could potentially be misused can also help scientists design vaccines and countermeasures more quickly.

The challenge for governments and research organisations is to maximise the defensive benefit while reducing opportunities for harmful use.

Preparedness is about manufacturing as much as discovery

One of Halton’s central arguments is that inventing a vaccine is not enough.

A successful laboratory discovery must be manufactured at scale.

COVID-19 exposed the strategic importance of vaccine production capacity.

Countries with access to manufacturing facilities and secure supply arrangements were in a stronger position during the early vaccine rollout.

Other nations faced delays while global demand exceeded production.

Manufacturing biological products is not comparable to switching on an ordinary industrial production line.

Facilities require specialised equipment, quality systems, trained personnel and regulatory oversight.

Different vaccine technologies may require different production processes.

Raw materials and components can become global bottlenecks.

This is why Halton argues manufacturing readiness must exist before an outbreak.

A country can possess the scientific formula for a vaccine and still struggle to deliver doses to its population.

Australia confronted that reality during COVID-19 as governments debated domestic manufacturing capability and access to emerging vaccine technologies.

The lesson for the next pandemic is that research, regulation and manufacturing cannot be treated as separate stages beginning only after a threat appears.

They must be planned as a connected system.

Regulators will again face pressure to move quickly

Halton also emphasised the role of regulators.

Emergency vaccine and treatment approvals create a difficult balance.

Move too slowly and people may die while an effective product remains unavailable.

Move without sufficient evidence and governments risk approving an ineffective or unsafe intervention.

The answer is not to abandon regulatory standards.

It is to prepare systems capable of reviewing evidence quickly.

Regulators can establish emergency pathways before a crisis.

International agencies can agree on data requirements.

Clinical trial protocols can be designed in advance.

Manufacturers can engage with regulators while products are being developed rather than waiting until the final stage.

Some administrative work can occur in parallel with scientific development.

COVID-19 demonstrated that regulatory processes can move rapidly when governments and agencies dedicate extraordinary resources to a common emergency.

Halton’s argument is that the world should preserve that capacity instead of rebuilding it from scratch every time a new pathogen emerges.

The next pandemic will test whether governments remembered COVID

There is a predictable cycle in disaster preparedness.

A crisis occurs.

Governments promise lessons will be learned.

Reviews are commissioned.

New systems receive funding.

Then the immediate threat fades.

Budgets tighten and political attention moves elsewhere.

Preparedness programs compete with hospitals, schools, defence, infrastructure and cost-of-living measures for public money.

The benefits of prevention remain invisible until prevention fails.

Halton’s warning is that the world cannot afford to repeat that cycle after COVID-19.

The Bundibugyo Ebola outbreak is already demonstrating what happens when a pathogen emerges without an approved strain-specific vaccine or treatment.

Scientists are moving with extraordinary speed.

The PARTNERS trial began enrolling patients only weeks after the international emergency intensified.

Experimental medicines are being tested while the outbreak is still spreading.

That is faster than many historical epidemic responses.

But more than 600 people have already died.

WHO officials fear large numbers of infections remain undetected.

Health workers are operating under severe pressure and researchers are racing the virus.

Preparedness cannot guarantee that a new pathogen will cause no deaths.

It can determine how long the world remains defenceless.

For Australia, the policy question is whether pandemic investment should continue while memories of lockdowns, border closures and mass disruption are still relatively recent.

Halton believes the answer is clear.

“Every time we respond to one of these situations we get faster,” she said.

The goal is to ensure the next response is fast enough to change the course of the crisis before ordinary life is again turned upside down.

“We want to be ready. We want to be quick. We want to save lives,” Halton said.

Her broader warning is one governments around the world may find harder to dismiss.

The question is no longer whether COVID-19 proved pandemics can transform modern societies.

It is whether countries used the years after COVID to prepare for the next one.

According to Halton, none can yet confidently say they have.