WHO members continue to negotiate pandemic agreement
Published: Sunday, Jun 2nd 2024, 10:30
Back to Live Feed
The members of the World Health Organization (WHO) are continuing negotiations on a global pandemic agreement. The plan to adopt it now had failed, so they set themselves a new deadline of spring 2025 at the end of their annual meeting in Geneva late on Saturday evening.
Such an agreement should ensure that the world is better prepared for the next pandemic and that important medical supplies are distributed more fairly worldwide. However, the 194 WHO members managed to tighten the International Health Regulations (IHR) and include the word "pandemic" there for the first time. This should also contribute to better pandemic preparedness. "We know from history that the question is not if, but when the next pandemic will come," said WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
The big issues
The independent pandemic agreement is to be adopted at the latest at the next annual meeting in spring 2025, or possibly at a special meeting of all 194 member states later this year. The conditions under which scarce goods such as protective materials, medicines and vaccines are to be made available to poorer countries and how poorer countries are to be financially supported in order to fulfill their obligations to monitor dangerous pathogens remain controversial.
Populists against pandemic agreement
In many countries, populists had stoked fears that such an agreement would give the WHO the power to impose lockdowns or compulsory vaccinations in a pandemic. The draft explicitly states that measures in the event of a pandemic can only ever be imposed by national governments.
Diplomats in Geneva looked ahead to the US elections in November with concern. If Donald Trump wins, the prospects of American participation in the agreement are poor. During his first term in office, he blamed China and the WHO for the spread of the coronavirus and announced his intention to withdraw from the WHO.
Clear language: pandemic in the new WHO text
The updated health regulations now define what a pandemic emergency is. In the corona pandemic, the WHO had declared the highest alert level at the end of January 2020, a "public health emergency of international concern". However, many countries only began taking protective measures after WHO chief Tedros used the word "pandemic" on March 11. It was not previously used in the regulations. It is also more clearly defined that unusual clusters of new diseases are reported.
However, the recommendation that WHO experts should be able to investigate an outbreak on site without hindrance failed. China had prevented WHO experts from traveling to the country for months following the coronavirus outbreak and restricted their work. The new rules are binding for all countries whose parliaments approve the update. Countries can also decide not to implement them.
©Keystone/SDA
English 
German 
French 
Spanish 
Arabic