Accord aims to prevent repeat of disjointed response and international disarray that surrounded COVID-19 pandemic.
Members of the World Health Organization (WHO) have adopted an agreement intended to improve preparedness for future pandemics, but the absence of the United States casts doubt on the treaty’s effectiveness.
After three years of negotiations, the legally binding pact was adopted by the World Health Assembly in Geneva on Tuesday. WHO member countries welcomed its passing with applause.
The accord aims to prevent a repeat of the disjointed response and international disarray that surrounded the COVID-19 pandemic by improving coordination, surveillance and access to medicines during any future pandemics.
“It’s an historic day,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said after the vote.
The agreement’s text was finalised last month after multiple rounds of tense negotiations.
“The world is safer today thanks to the leadership, collaboration and commitment of our member states to adopt the historic WHO Pandemic Agreement,” Tedros said in a statement.
“The agreement is a victory for public health, science and multilateral action. It will ensure we, collectively, can better protect the world from future pandemic threats. It is also a recognition by the international community that our citizens, societies and economies must not be left vulnerable to again suffer losses like those endured during COVID-19,” he added.
The agreement aims to better detect and combat pandemics by focusing on greater international coordination and surveillance and more equitable access to vaccines and treatments.
The negotiations grew tense amid disagreements between wealthy and developing countries with the latter feeling cut off from access to vaccines during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Dr Esperance Luvindao, Namibia’s health minister and chairwoman of a committee that paved the way for the agreement’s adoption, said COVID-19 inflicted huge costs “on lives, livelihoods and economies”.
“We, as sovereign states, have resolved to join hands as one world together, so we can protect our children, elders, front-line health workers and all others from the next pandemic,” Luvindao added. “It is our duty and responsibility to humanity.”
Effective without US support?
The US, traditionally the WHO’s top donor, was not part of the final stages of the agreement process after the Trump administration announced the US pullout from the WHO and funding for the agency in January.
US Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr slammed the WHO as “moribund” during the annual assembly.
“I urge the world’s health ministers and the WHO to take our withdrawal from the organisation as a wake-up call,” he said in a video shown at the meeting in Geneva. “We’ve already been in contact with like-minded countries, and we encourage others to consider joining us.”
Kennedy accused the WHO of failing to learn from the lessons of the pandemic.
“It has doubled down with the pandemic agreement, which will lock in all of the dysfunction of the WHO pandemic response. … We’re not going to participate in that,” he said.
The treaty’s effectiveness will face doubts without the US, which poured billions into ensuring pharmaceutical companies develop COVID-19 vaccines quickly. Countries face no penalties if they ignore it, a common issue in international law.
Countries have until May 2026 to thrash out the details of the agreement’s pathogen access and benefit-sharing (PABS) mechanism.
The PABS mechanism deals with sharing access to pathogens with pandemic potential and then sharing the benefits derived from them, such as vaccines, tests and treatments.
Once the PABS system is finalised, countries can then ratify the agreement. Once 60 do so, the treaty will then enter into force.
