WHO adopts landmark pandemic agreement

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The UN health agency on Tuesday adopted a landmark Pandemic Agreement on tackling future health crises, struck after more than three years of negotiations sparked by the Covid-19 crisis.

The accord aims to prevent the disjointed response and international disarray that surrounded the COVID-19 pandemic by improving global coordination and surveillance, and access to vaccines, in any future pandemics.

The World Health Organisation's decision-making annual assembly adopted the plan on Tuesday at its Geneva headquarters.

"It's an historic day," WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told AFP after the vote.

Pandemic agreement: key points

The WHO Pandemic Agreement, an accord designed to address the mistakes made in handling COVID-19, was adopted Tuesday by the World Health Assembly.

The details of the agreement's central mechanism -- on sharing pathogen information, and tools like vaccines -- have yet to be worked out by May 2026, after which it can be ratified by countries.

Here are the main points of the agreement:

Objective

The objective of the World Health Organisation Pandemic Agreement is "strengthening pandemic prevention, preparedness and response".

Following the glaring inequity and deficiencies exposed in the world's handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, the agreement is guided by the principles of equity, solidarity and transparency.

It says public health decisions in the face of pandemics must be based on "the best available science and evidence".

Respect for the sovereign rights of states is also a key foundation, according to the text.

Prevention and surveillance

Countries must take progressive steps to strengthen their pandemic prevention and surveillance capacities.

Subject to resources, countries must develop, reinforce and implement comprehensive national pandemic prevention plans.

They must bolster the prevention of emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases with early detection and control measures.

This would include moves like routine immunisation, managing biological risks in laboratories, preventing antimicrobial resistance, and stopping the transmission of diseases from animals to humans.

Sustainable local production

The text calls for countries to take measures to ensure "more equitable geographical distribution and rapid scale-up of the global production of pandemic-related health products" like vaccines.

It also calls for more "sustainable, timely and equitable access to such products", and for countries to "reduce the potential gap between supply and demand during pandemic emergencies".

Technology transfer

The transfer of technology and know-how needed to produce pandemic-related health products, in particular to developing countries, had been a major sticking point during the negotiations.

Some wealthier countries, notably ones where such products are currently produced, rejected the idea that such transfers should be mandatory.

The agreed-upon text instead calls for transfers to be undertaken on "mutually agreed" terms.

It calls for measures and incentives including licensing agreements and favourable conditions linked to aspects such as financing and regulations to promote technology transfer.

It also aims to promote tech and knowledge transfer to recognised regional or global centres coordinated by the WHO.

Pathogen access, benefit-sharing

The heart of the agreement is the proposed Pathogen Access and Benefit-Sharing System (PABS) -- a new platform allowing the swift sharing of pathogen data with pharmaceutical companies, enabling them to start work quickly on pandemic-fighting products.

Under PABS, countries will commit to sharing data rapidly on emerging pathogens, while vaccines and other health products developed by accessing that information would be shared on a more equitable footing.

The text says manufacturers who participate should quickly make available to the WHO "20 percent of their real-time production" of pandemic-related health products.

This includes "a minimum threshold of 10 percent" in the form of donations, and the rest "reserved at affordable prices" for the UN health agency.

For pharmaceutical firms, the advantage is to have "access to all information on pathogens with pandemic potential" through a single mechanism, Anne-Claire Amprou, who co-chaired the agreement negotiations, said Tuesday.

Any company can participate, even if its headquarters are outside a WHO member state. Amprou said US manufacturers had followed the negotiations "very closely".

The mechanism's details still need to be negotiated by May 2026. An intergovernmental negotiating group must begin meeting by July 15.

"Things need to be clarified, for example, how contracts between manufacturers and the WHO will be negotiated," said Amprou.

Once the PABS annex is finalised, the agreement can be opened for ratification by countries. The agreement enters into force after 60 ratifications.

Supply chain and logistics

A Global Supply Chain and Logistics Network will be set up for equitable, timely and affordable access to pandemic-related health products.

During pandemic emergencies, countries should prioritise sharing pandemic-related health products through the network to ensure equitable distribution based on public health risk and need.

The structure and operational modalities of the network are to be coordinated by the WHO.