WHO Strikes Out with Proposed “Pandemic Treaty”
Citizens, their representatives, and many national leaders are balking at agreeing to any treaty the “subject matter experts” of WHO were concocting. So, two years of negotiations ended last week without a final draft of the global agreement.
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 “because we need it.”
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director general of the World Health Organization, indicates the negotiations will continue.
“The world still needs a pandemic treaty. Many of the challenges that caused the serious impact during COVID-19 still exist,” said Tedros. “So let’s continue to try everything.”
Experts in global health expect that WHO will grant another six to 12 months for negotiators to complete their work – and resolve the sticking points.
“It was a huge disappointment,” says Lawrence Gostin, a professor of global health law at Georgetown University, after learning about the delay. “But there is a strong appetite to carry on.”
This represents one small win for man, one significant win for mankind and its freedoms.