The question Europe must now confront is uncomfortable but unavoidable: have medical supply chains been structurally repaired since COVID-19, or has the world simply moved on? The pandemic exposed how deeply medical supply chains had been optimized for efficiency at the expense of resilience. COVID-19 offered a costly warning about the fragility of global health supply chains. The next pandemic will not wait for broken supply chains to be fixed. Dr Ahmed Bilal, MD, is Vice President of PIMSA–GHWD and works on global health security and health systems resilience.