SOURCE: Al Jazeera

■ WHO mem­ber states adopt res­o­lu­tion to start draft­ing a glob­al agree­ment on how to pre­vent and tack­le the next pan­dem­ic ■

(AL JAZEERA) — Mem­ber states of the World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion (WHO) have agreed to start draft­ing a glob­al agree­ment to pre­vent and tack­le the next glob­al pan­dem­ic.

Coun­tries adopt­ed a res­o­lu­tion on Wednes­day at a spe­cial meet­ing in Gene­va, launch­ing the process that it is hoped should re­sult in a new agree­ment on pan­demics.

The three-day meet­ing of the World Health As­sem­bly – the WHO’s de­ci­sion-mak­ing body com­pris­ing all 194 mem­ber states – was an un­prece­dent­ed spe­cial ses­sion on how to han­dle the next pan­dem­ic.

The de­ci­sion was wel­comed by the head of the UN health agency, Tedros Ghe­breye­sus, who hailed the move as his­toric.

“The COVID-19 pan­dem­ic has shone a light on the many flaws in the glob­al sys­tem to pro­tect peo­ple from pan­demics: the most vul­ner­a­ble peo­ple go­ing with­out vac­cines; health work­ers with­out need­ed equip­ment to per­form their life-sav­ing work; and ‘me-first’ ap­proach­es that stymie the glob­al sol­i­dar­i­ty need­ed to deal with a glob­al threat,” Tedros said.

“But at the same time, we have seen in­spir­ing demon­stra­tions of sci­en­tif­ic and po­lit­i­cal col­lab­o­ra­tion, from the rapid de­vel­op­ment of vac­cines to to­day’s com­mit­ment by coun­tries to ne­go­ti­ate a glob­al ac­cord that will help to keep fu­ture gen­er­a­tions safer from the im­pacts of pan­demics,” he added.

In the mean­time, coun­tries should con­tin­ue to abide by the WHO’s 2005 In­ter­na­tion­al Health Reg­u­la­tions, Tedros said.

The de­ci­sion, en­ti­tled The World To­geth­er, was adopt­ed by con­sen­sus at the spe­cial as­sem­bly, draw­ing ap­plause at the end of a three-day meet­ing.

“The text be­fore us is the prod­uct of ex­ten­sive dis­cus­sions, of frank ex­changes and of com­pro­mis­es,” said Aus­tralia’s am­bas­sador Sal­ly Mans­field, who co-chaired the work­ing group.

The Eu­ro­pean Union (EU) had pushed for agree­ment on an in­ter­na­tion­al legal­ly bind­ing treaty, along with about 70 coun­tries, but Brazil, In­dia and the Unit­ed States were among those re­luc­tant to com­mit to a treaty, the Reuters news agency re­port­ed, cit­ing diplo­mats.

“We call for an am­bi­tious process in de­vel­op­ing this treaty – let us all demon­strate our mul­ti­lat­er­al com­mit­ment and en­gage­ment to­wards a bind­ing in­stru­ment,” Am­bas­sador Lotte Knud­sen, head of the EU del­e­ga­tion to the Unit­ed Na­tions in Gene­va, said in a state­ment.

The Unit­ed States wel­comed the de­ci­sion say­ing in a state­ment: “This mo­men­tous step rep­re­sents our col­lec­tive re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to work to­geth­er to ad­vance health se­cu­ri­ty and to make the glob­al health sys­tem stronger and more re­spon­sive.”

Such an agree­ment to beef up mea­sures against pan­demics is ex­pect­ed to be ready in May 2024, cov­er­ing is­sues from da­ta shar­ing and genome se­quenc­ing of emerg­ing virus­es to eq­ui­table dis­tri­b­u­tion of vac­cines and drugs de­rived from re­search.