WHO Member States have ended intensive negotiations aimed at strengthening global capacities to respond to future pandemics and outbreaks in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, and agreed to submit outcomes of their work for consideration by the upcoming World Health Assembly, starting Monday.
Two parallel negotiation processes were undertaken to make a series of amendments to the International Health Regulations (2005) and to develop a first-ever pandemic agreement, convention or other legal instrument.
Delegations to the Seventy-seventh World Health Assembly, running from 27 May–1 June, will consider the outcomes of both processes, and the next steps for the two.
The Working Group on the IHR (WGIHR) amendments will also present its outcome to the World Health Assembly for consideration, including some provisions for which agreement in principle was reached and others that the WGIHR Bureau updated its proposed text for consideration by Member States.
Read more: World Health Organization
Efforts to draft a pandemic treaty falter as countries disagree on how to respond to next emergency
On Friday, Roland Driece, co-chair of WHO’s negotiating board for the agreement, acknowledged that countries were unable to come up with a draft. WHO had hoped a final draft treaty could be agreed on at its yearly meeting of health ministers starting Monday in Geneva.
“We are not where we hoped we would be when we started this process,” he said, adding that finalizing an international agreement on how to respond to a pandemic was critical “for the sake of humanity.” Driece said the World Health Assembly next week would take up lessons from its work and plot the way forward, urging participants to make “the right decisions to take this process forward” to one day reach a pandemic agreement.
Read more: Associated Press
How the World Health Organization could fight future pandemics
Besides the sharing of drugs and vaccines, one of the most contested aspects is financing, including whether to set up a dedicated fund or draw on existing resources, such as the World Bank’s $1 billion pandemic fund.
The new IHR rules and the pandemic accord are designed to complement each other and views vary over whether one could exist without the other. Sources say the IHR talks are more advanced and more likely to pass, with negotiations close to completion. However, two Western diplomats expressed fears that those seeking big concessions on the pandemic treaty will hold the IHR talks “hostage”.
Read more: Reuters