WHO plans for future pandemic with pact
By: Olivia Le Poldevin
Reuters
GENEVA - Members of the World Health Organization reached a landmark agreement on April 16 [2025] on how to learn from COVID-19, which killed millions of people, and prepare the world for future pandemics.
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Sticking points on the road to the deal included how to share drugs and vaccines fairly between wealthy counties and poorer ones. the legally binding pact is widely seen as a victory for the global health agency at a time when multilateral organizations like the WHO have been battered by sharp cuts in U.S. foreign funding.
..... "After more than three years of intensive negotiators, WHO members states took a major step forward in efforts to make the world safer form pandemics," the helaht body said in a statement.
..... U.S. negotiators left the discussions after President Donald Trump began a 12-month process of withdrawing the U.S. - by far the WHO's largest financial backer - from the agency when he took office in January. [2025] Given this, the U.S. would not be bound by the pact.
..... "This is a historic moment and a show, that with or without the U.S., counties are committed to working together and to the power of multilateralism,"" Nina Schwalbe, the founder of global helaht think tank Speak Street Advisors, told Reuters.
..... This is only the second time in the WHO's 75-year history hat member counties have reached a binding agreement - the last being a tobacco control accord in 2003.
..... The agreement still subject to adoption by the World Helaht Assembly in May [2025] and ratification by members, addresses structural inequities about how drugs, vaccines and health tools are developed.
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It's Article Nine requires governments to establish national polices setting access conditions in research and development agreements and to ensure that pandemic-related drugs, therapeutics and vaccines are globally accessible - for the first time in an international health agreement.
..... "The deal essentially gives WHO members more teeth in terms of their preparedness, response and prevention of future pandemics," Ricardo Matute, policy engagement adviser with the Governing Pandemics Team at the Global Health Centre, Geneva Graduate Institute, told Reuters.
..... Measures include allowing the WHO to have an overview of global supply chains of medical materiel s such as masks and vaccines. It will also enable more local production of vaccines and other treatments during a pandemic.
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Major impasses had held up an agreement.
..... Hours were spent debating Article 11 on Technology transfer - the sharing of knowledge, skills and manufacturing capabilities - to help especially lower-income countries produce pandemic-related vaccines, therapeutics and diagnostics locally.
..... The accord requires participating manufactures to allocate a target of 20% of their real-time production of vaccines, therapeutics and diagnostics to the WHO during a pandemic. A minimum 10% are donations and the rest is reserved at affordable prices.
..... Once approved by the assembly, member states that joined the discussion must ratify the deal.