A two-day global pandemic simulation concluded last week with a key finding that has long shaped emergency preparedness doctrine: plans only matter if they work under pressure. The World Health Organization wrapped up Exercise Polaris II on April 23, bringing together 26 countries and territories, more than 600 health emergency experts, and over 25 partner organizations to test how the world would respond to the rapid spread of a dangerous, fictional new bacterium.
The exercise, which took place April 22–23 in the context of WHO’s broader HorizonX simulation programme, is designed to move pandemic readiness out of policy documents and into practice. It builds directly on Exercise Polaris I, held in April 2025, which centered on a fictional viral pathogen. This second iteration was larger in scope, expanding the number of participating countries and incorporating new regional networks, including the recently launched Health Emergency Leaders Network for Africa and the Eastern Mediterranean.
Frameworks Put to the Test
At the center of Exercise Polaris II were two WHO frameworks that have been developed to structure how the world responds to major health emergencies.
The first, the Global Health Emergency Corps (GHEC) framework — published in June 2025 — outlines how countries can build and strengthen their health emergency workforces based on the principles of sovereignty, equity, and solidarity. It is intended to improve cross-border collaboration by supporting information exchange and enabling the deployment of regional and global emergency personnel when local capacity is overwhelmed.
The second, the National Health Emergency Alert and Response Framework — published in October 2025 — specifies the key functions, coordination systems, and actions required for effective responses at local, sub-national, and national levels.
Both frameworks were activated simultaneously during the simulation. Each participating country stood up its emergency coordination structure, shared information in real time, aligned policies across jurisdictions, and practiced surging their workforce — conditions designed to mirror what an actual pandemic response would demand.
The exercise also piloted the use of AI-enabled tools to support workforce organization and planning, an emerging area of interest as health agencies explore how emerging technologies can be integrated into emergency operations.
Coordination at Scale
The scope of partner engagement reflects the complexity of modern outbreak response. More than 25 national, regional, and global agencies participated, including Africa CDC, UNICEF, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, Médecins Sans Frontières, the Robert Koch Institute, UK-Med, and networks such as the Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network (GOARN) and the Emergency Medical Teams initiative.
Participating countries spanned all six WHO regions, including Bangladesh, Brazil, Egypt, France, Ghana, India, Indonesia, Kenya, the Philippines, Rwanda, and Yemen, among others — a geographically diverse cohort that tested whether coordination mechanisms hold across vastly different national health systems and capacities.
“Exercise Polaris II showed what is possible when we act together. It demonstrated that global cooperation is not optional — it is essential,” said WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, framing the exercise as a demonstration of what the GHEC is designed to achieve in practice.
Dr. Chikwe Ihekweazu, Executive Director of WHO’s Health Emergencies Programme, echoed the point: “This reflects the spirit of the Global Health Emergency Corps: a well-organized, trained, coordinated and connected emergency workforce ready to respond wherever and whenever it is needed.”
For countries and partners seeking to operationalize the GHEC and related frameworks, the Polaris exercises serve as a live audit — identifying where coordination breaks down, where information flows stall, and where surge capacity falls short. The lessons extracted from exercises like this one are intended to directly inform how those frameworks evolve.
Sources and further reading:
Practicing today for tomorrow’s emergencies – WHO convenes countries and partners to simulate response to major disease outbreak – World Health Organization
Adapted from the World Health Organization via CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 IGO