The question is not if there will be another pandemic, but when, says Dr. Andrew Hammond.

There is a consensus on the need to accelerate and fund research and development of new health tools for outbreaks and epidemics, he says. Hammond: The sticking point is how to do it. Global health actors demand that the health tools developed by the projects they fund be accessible and that the knowledge generated be widely disseminated, he writes. The WHO has only reached an agreement once in its 75-year history – the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control in 2003, he adds.