Five years after the COVID-19 pandemic hit the globe, the World Health Organisation’s member countries agreed on a draft “pandemic treaty” that sets guidelines for how nations will deal with future health crises.
The draft treaty includes a provision to guarantee that countries will share drugs and vaccines with the WHO, which will hold up to 20% of such products to ensure poorer countries get supplies.
“After more than three years of intensive negotiations, WHO member states took a major step forward in efforts to make the world safer from pandemics,” the health body said in a statement.
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The deal requires governments to establish national policies setting access conditions in research and development agreements and to ensure that pandemic-related drugs, therapeutics and vaccines are globally accessible. Negotiations on this provision are expected to continue after the treaty is likely accepted by member countries in May.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus heralded it as a historic moment, saying countries have proven that “in our divided world, nations can still work together to find common ground and a shared response.”
America is not a part of the agreement following US President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw the country from the WHO in January.
The health body was tasked with overseeing a pandemic treaty in 2021. This treaty seeks to address the shortcomings exposed during the COVID-19 pandemic, which claimed millions of lives from 2020 to 2022. If finalised, this would mark only the second international treaty in WHO’s 75-year history, the first being a tobacco control accord in 2003.
