Global pandemic preparedness fails when science ignores colonial legacies, profit-driven supply chains, and marginalised health systems
Original framing: “Why sound, strong science alone isn’t enough in pandemic preparedness” — Nature
Marginalised voices—such as those of *informal healthcare workers* in Lagos’ *mama midwery* networks or *migrant farmworkers* in California’s salad bowls—have consistently provided early warnings of outbreaks but are excluded from decision-making. During COVID-19, *undocumented immigrants* in the U.S. faced barriers to testing and vaccines due to ICE collaborations with health agencies, while *sex workers* in Kenya used peer networks to track variants before official reports. The *People’s Vaccine Alliance* estimates that 90% of vaccine doses in low-income countries are still controlled by patent holders, a dynamic that silences voices demanding open-source medical technologies. Centring these perspectives would reveal preparedness as a *rights issue* rather than a technical challenge.
The repeated failures of pandemic preparedness are not failures of science but failures of *power*—specifically, the power to define what counts as knowledge, who controls data, and whose lives are deemed expendable in the name of 'efficiency.
' The colonial legacy of treating Global South health systems as 'backward' while extracting their biological and cultural resources persists today in the form of data colonialism, where Western institutions hoard genomic and epidemiological data while denying access to the communities that generate it. This dynamic is not accidental but structural, reinforced by neoliberal governance models that treat health as a market rather than a public good. The solution lies not in more data but in *restoring agency*: Indigenous data sovereignty, marginalised-led R&D, and artistic-spiritual frameworks that treat preparedness as a relational practice. The trickster reminds us that the real crisis is not our ignorance but our refusal to see the systems we’ve built—systems that turn pandemics into profit opportunities for the few while leaving the many to suffer in silence.