Pandemic treaty ‘a sign of nations collaborating’

The pandemic treaty reached by World Health Organisation member states in April shows nations can still stand together despite rising geopolitical tensions, co-chair of the talks Precious Matsoso said on Monday. The legally binding accord, which took more than three years to negotiate, aims to create a unified response to the next pandemic and is due to be presented to the World Health Assembly for adoption next week.

The pandemic treaty reached by World Health Organisation (WHO) member states in April shows nations can still stand together despite rising geopolitical tensions, co-chair of the talks Precious Matsoso said on Monday.

The legally binding accord, which took more than three years to negotiate, aims to create a unified response to the next pandemic and is due to be presented to the World Health Assembly for adoption next week.

“It is a strong signal that together we stand to gain if there is global solidarity. It is a clear indication that multilateralism is not in ICU,” Matsoso said in a plenary address to the annual Board of Healthcare Funders conference under way in Cape Town this week.

Matsoso, a former health director-general, is adjunct professor at Sunway University in Malaysia.

“The WHO has 194 countries. And when one member state withdraws, another 193 remain. They still continue to work together and their voices still matter,” she said, referring to US President Donald Trump’s executive order in February withdrawing the US from the WHO and ending its involvement in the negotiations. It is not expected to ratify the treaty.

The pandemic treaty is the second legally binding instrument agreed to by WHO nations since the organisation was formed in 1948. It follows the framework convention on tobacco control, brought into effect in 2005, which sought to create a global response to the harm it causes.

The pandemic accord aims to deal with many of the failures that played out at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, in which a handful of rich nations hoarded vaccines, tests and treatments when the products were in short supply.

Donated stock arrived in some of the world’s poorest countries, many of them in Africa, only when rich nations had a glut.

“The pandemic agreement is future-proof. It is intended to create a rule-based system for health threats and will ensure there is equity — one of the problems that this continent in particular experienced,” Matsoso said.

A key aspect of the treaty obliges rich nations to share information, including genetic sequences, on novel pathogens. They will also be obliged to share interventions such as vaccines and diagnostics. Signatory nations will be required to develop their own pandemic prevention strategies, including measures to limit the risks of diseases passing from animals to humans.

Negotiations on the pandemic treaty were conducted despite the conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza and the emergence of monkeypox, Matsoso said. Talks began in February 2022, the month Russia invaded Ukraine.

“Even though negotiators presented different perspectives, informed by their national interests and geopolitical context, their positions did not deter them from coming up with a uniform approach, in recognition of what happened in Covid. They were able to compromise for the sake of humanity,” she said.