This handbook describes the role of parliaments in strengthening emergency preparedness and health security.
Throughout 2020 and 2021, the COVID-19 pandemic subjected global and country emergency preparedness to a tough stress test. As the disease emerged and transmitted easily from person to person and country to country, it simultaneously overwhelmed the national capacities of many countries and resisted containment measures. As countries struggled to bring down their infection numbers, many experienced multiple waves of infection with high morbidity and mortality rates.