With the Intesa of WHO the world is safer by future pandemics

After three years of negotiations and bargaining sessions that seemed infinite there is the draft of a treaty for the management of the next pandemics. All 194 WHO Member States, except one, negotiated an agreement of principle to prevent, prepare and respond to future threats to global health, moving this time In a single coordinated and pre -established waywithout the disordered panic reactions that characterized the era of Covid-19.

Although the text is still to be perfected and voted, and despite some critical points still to be discussed, it is a historical result That – in a difficult and tense moment for international politics – reiterates the importance of multilateralism.

The general agreement, of 32 pages, must be approved in the next few days in Geneva by the delegates who will perfection from it in the final version. And in May it will have to be adopted by the WHO Member countries during the World Health Assembly, their annual meeting.

The heart of the agreement and its most critical point is, as often happens in international treaties, the relationship between developing and industrialized countries. The former is asked to Improve the surveillance network And the sharing of the biological material of pathogens, since pandemics often originate in their territories. But, at the same time, they go guaranteed shares of drugs and vaccinesto prevent the industrialized countries that host the pharmaceutical plants accumulate millions of doses without distributing them where they need more. It was calculated that, during the Covid-19 pandemic, a more fair distribution of vaccines could have prevented 1.3 million deaths and hundreds of millions of infections.

The agreement outlines the foundations of a system called Pathogen Access and Benefit Sharing (PABS), A system of access to pathogens and sharing of benefits. In essence, pharmaceutical companies are guaranteed access to scientific data on emerging or new pathogens, such as the sharing of their genetic sequence or organic materials collected, provided that – in return – to guarantee a “equitable share” of vaccines, diagnostic tools and drugs in case of pandemic.

Like this exchange should take place, it has yet to be defined. After long negotiations it seems to have come to a compromise that will see the developers committed to donate 10% of their production to WHO so that it can distribute it, and offer Another 10% at affordable prices. However, the attachment that contains these specifications will not come to the signature and ratification until next year.

The details to transform the guidelines into a concrete plan are still too smoky, and remains a basic problem: drug producers are not states, but private subjects.

Connected to this issue is the need to encourage the transfer of technologies (the “know-how” and plants to produce drugs and vaccines) in developing countries, so that these can produce the necessary more self-sufficient way, without necessarily depending on the solidarity of others. In the Treaty, the signatory countries have established to perform this passage of knowledge and tools according to terms “voluntarily undertaken and mutually agreed conditions, without prejudice to the rights and obligations of the parties pursuant to other international agreements”.

One of the first points on which an agreement was reached is the need to better protection of healthcare professionalsthat the common memory too many times removed from the Covid era recalls to fight the Sars-Cov-2 at the forefront, often without even adequate individual protective equipment.

Another important step concerns governments, called to establish conditions on the research of drugs and vaccines they have financed. In exchange for the funds paid for research, governments will be able to ask universities and companies that it is also left to other possibilities to produce productswhen their effectiveness is demonstrated, or to guarantee accessible price policies or that protocols and results of clinical studies are published promptly and shared with the scientific community.

During the Covid pandemic, in fact, the governments that had often financed the research have not always been able to make their voices heard on how to share the results of discoveries made thanks to the costs of the taxpayers. Other passages of the treaty concern the prevention of upstream pandemics, such as measures to reduce the probability of passing viruses from animals to men.

The agreement was reached without the presence of the United Stateswithdrawn from the pandemic treaty and the WHO on the day of Trump’s settlement. According to some observers, precisely the destructive policies of the new administration for global public health would have given a final accelerated to the negotiations. Their promoters “have shown that multilateralism is alive and well and that in our divided world nations can still work together to find common ground and a shared response to common threats”, said Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, general manager of WHO Wednesday 16 April.

On the one hand, the exclusion of the USA from the agreement leaves the United States led by Trump weaker and isolated in the face of pandemic threats. On the other, deprives the world of some of its best scientists And he risks exposing the agreement to future, possible side shoulders, which could undermine the ability to ratify the intended by the individual states.