WHO Member States agree to the Pandemic Treaty

After three years of disputed negotiations, the Member Nations of the World Health Organization agreed to the “Pandemic Treaty” project aimed at helping the global community in better prevention and response to health crises.

The contract aims to prevent the fractional, weakening response to the Covid-19 pandemic, which left many needy nations with narrow access to vaccines and treatment methods. Would commit to wealthy nations to share key information about pathogens and interventions technologies such as vaccines with the rest of the world.

Member States are expected to adopt a treaty that will be legally binding next month. The United States, which ceased to participate in negotiations after President Trump announced plans to withdraw from WHO, is not expected to ratify the treaty.

The design of the treaty has a more narrow scope than the vision, which it proposed for the first time during a pandemic with air conditioning, but is significant as the first grave multilateral agreement in a world where the United States is no longer the unquestioned anchor.

“It shows that in the US the world can gather for global health, as well as the recognition that Pandemia requires global solidarity,” said Nina Schwalbe, a global health consultant who performed leadership in the USA and international organizations and who strictly observed negotiations. “They moved their red lines and reached an agreement. This is not an uncomplicated feat for 191 states. And there is a lot. It may not be as sturdy as we wanted in many problems, but there is a lot to build.”

In December 2021, WHO convened a group of negotiators to demonstrate the conditions of a modern global agreement, which, as he hoped, would assist countries react faster and effectively to future health threats.

Negotiations were ponderous and tough and often used by national interests. High -income countries were against the company in sharing diagnostics, treatment methods and other technologies, and the developing countries were reluctant to undertake modern obligations that did not bring additional resources.

European nations with gigantic pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries – together with the United States, when they participated in talks under the Biden administration – in particular, they resisted the language of sharing technology and intellectual property. To reach the final contract, Europe has adopted licenses for this language, while African countries gave Europe more what he wanted for agricultural and wildlife supervision.

Brazil was of key importance in the living of an 11-hour agreement between a group of 7 nations, managed by Germany and blocks of developing countries, which were often contradictory, especially in connection with what they perceived as capital issues.

Participants said that China was largely a still participant in negotiations, adapted to a block requiring greater equity, but not progressing the main program items. According to the terms of the agreement, China would be forced to come to the explosion more than about the coronavirus at the beginning of the pandemic.

The draft treaty includes a provision that guarantees that countries that share pathogens samples and genetic sequences will gain access to any diagnostics, vaccines or procedures developed as a result. WHO would receive at least 10 percent of manufacturers’ products, because they are donated as a donation, as well as to another 10 percent at “affordable prices” to distribute the poorest countries in the world.

The draft treaty does not have any enforcement mechanism, which means that in a situation such as fierce competition with Covid vaccines, there would be no assurance that the countries follow the conditions they agreed.

But at the time of reproduction of threats of infectious diseases – including bird flu, MPOX and Marburg virus – some public health experts found that the treaty was groundbreaking, partly because it adopts the overall picture of the epidemic, not only dealing with how to respond to a modern body, but also steps to prevent their first.

For example, the treaty requires member nations to develop their own plans to prevent pandemic and supervision. As part of these plans, the treaty says that countries should identify the circumstances in which pathogens can jump from animals on people, a phenomenon known as inflameting and take action to reduce this risk.

“This agreement, if it is adopted next month, would be the first binding international agreement on the prevention of coincidence,” said Dr. Neil Vora, senior consultant of Conservation International and executive director of Pandemics in the source coalition. “And this is urgently needed and represents a leap forward.”

Some nations initially exposed to some of these duties of preventing pandemic, perceiving them as bothersome and high-priced, said Alexandra Finch, a senior collaborator at the O’Neill Institute for the National and Global Health Law at Georgetown University.

Finch said that the lack of a dedicated source of financing in the treaty that helps countries to pay for this work. But the final language says that the nations will start this work “subject to the availability of resources”.

“I would like to have a dedicated prevention financing line,” said Finch. “Countries could be a bit more comfortable being more ambitious.”

Another controversial problem was the language of technology, such as vaccines, developed in public financing. Countries will be required to develop national policies regarding the basis of public interest conditions in the field of research and development financing, transferred to universities or companies that guarantee “timely and fair access” to resulting drugs or diagnostics during a pandemic.

Such conditions may include the issue of clinical trial results; by allowing other companies to produce products, regardless of patents; And limiting prices, said Michelle Childs, political director at Non -Profit Agency for the Development of DNDI drugs, which was in Geneva during talks to provide suggestions to negotiators. These funds can assist avoid what happened during the Covid pandemic, when Biden administration could not force vaccine producers to share information about products that they developed largely on research financed by the government.

Deisy Ventura, a professor of global health ethics at the University of São Paulo, said that the finalization of the treaty without direct involvement of the United States helped create a space for an essential change in thinking about a pandemic reaction. She described the American perspective as above all a biomedical approach focused on how to stop pathogens from entering the country’s borders.

“Surveillance systems that retain diseases where they come – this is not a vision of global health that concerns the elimination of diseases or changes in social conditions that allow them to appear,” she said.

The contract is “very far from what we dreamed of” when the negotiations began: “that we will have a common, multilateral coordination and that national egoism will be overcome,” said Dr. Ventura. However, she added, however, this has great symbolic value.

“This is a necessary political gesture: 191 countries that confirm the possibility of building multilateralism without depending on the United States,” she said. “The contract is less essential than the fact that negotiations have not disappointed.”

Mrs. Schwalbe said that the contract still had a value without US participation, despite the fact that the United States manages the world in developing Covid vaccines that helped end this pandemic.

“We broke down, thinking that the vaccine would be a response Another pandemic, and this is not certain – she said. “But when it comes to preventing thinning with animals, there are so many things that can be done now that you can do, which will prepare the world better. And the United States, the only thing we lose is that we are not so prepared.”

Dr. Vora said that the lack of the United States was unfortunate. “Pathogens do not respect boundaries,” he said. “If there is any needy relationship in the chain, we are all susceptible.”

But Dr. Vora added, the lack of one country should not diminish the “breakthrough” achievement. “This makes the world a safer place and it is a great starting point for additional action,” he said. “Because we now have many threats that knock on our door.”