The WHO members agree on historic draft agreement to combat future pandemics

Members of the World Health Organization reached agreement on a historic draft agreement on combating global pandemics on April 16.

This is stated on the WHO website.

After 13 formal rounds of meetings, nine of which were extended, as well as numerous informal and intersessional negotiations on various aspects of the draft agreement, the WHO Intergovernmental Negotiating Body (INB) has finalized its work on a proposal for a “WHO Pandemic Agreement”.

Proposals in the text developed by the INB include:

• creating a system of access to pathogens and benefit sharing;
• pandemic prevention measures, including through the One Health approach;
• development of research capacities in different regions of the world;
• facilitating the transfer of technology and related knowledge, skills and expertise for the production of pandemic-related medical products;
• Mobilizing qualified, trained, and multidisciplinary national and global personnel to respond to health emergencies;
• creation of a coordinating financial mechanism;
• increasing the level of training, readiness, as well as the functions and viability of the healthcare system;
• creating a global supply and logistics system.

As Reuters notes, this is only the second time in the WHOʼs 75-year history that member states have reached a binding agreement — the last was the agreement on tobacco control in 2003.

The agreement, which still needs to be adopted by the World Health Assembly in May and ratified by its members, aims to address structural inequalities in the development of medicines, vaccines and health tools.

Article 9 of the agreement commits governments to develop national policies that define the conditions for access to research and development results and ensure global availability of medicines, therapeutics and vaccines related to pandemics. This provision is included for the first time in an international health agreement.

The agreement also commits participating manufacturers to donate 20% of their current production of vaccines, therapeutics and diagnostics to the WHO during a pandemic. At least 10% of this volume must be provided as humanitarian aid, and the rest must be sold at affordable prices.

• The coronavirus outbreak occurred in late 2019 in China. On March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization declared the spread of the coronavirus a pandemic. Chinese authorities linked the outbreak to the Wuhan Huanan animal and seafood market: the first patients were either regular buyers or sellers there. Scientists believe that bats, snakes, or pangolins (their meat is considered a delicacy in China) were involved in the transmission chain of the SARS-CoV-2 virus.
• On May 5, 2023, the WHO canceled the COVID-19 pandemic status. Officially, 7 million people died from the coronavirus during the pandemic, but the WHO emphasized that the number of victims could be several times higher — at least 20 million.
• In December 2024, a US House of Representatives committee that spent two years investigating the COVID-19 pandemic and its effects in the US published a report concluding that the coronavirus "most likely originated in a laboratory in Wuhan, China".

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