World unprepared for another pandemic as WHO treaty talks push on
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[May 31, 2024]
By Emma Farge and Jennifer Rigby
LONDON (Reuters) - The world is unprepared for another health crisis
like COVID-19, a leading global health expert has warned, as countries
make a last push to agree a way forward for a pandemic treaty amid fears
the political climate for agreement could sour.
World Health Organization member states gathered in Geneva on Friday to
work out how to continue negotiations about an accord after missing this
month’s deadline.
“We only hope that... (in the) next few months, we don't have another
pandemic that finds us in a world which is still unprepared for a major
crisis,” Muhammad Ali Pate, Nigeria’s health minister and a board member
of the Global Fund to Fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria, told
Reuters.
A major sticking point in the treaty has been provisions for low and
middle-income countries to have access to 20% of tests, treatments and
vaccines developed to fight the pandemic, either at no-profit costs or
donated.
Ali Pate said the figure was reasonable to avoid the scramble for
life-saving products that saw African countries last-in-line during
COVID.
While talks on the treaty are likely to continue for several months or
even years, a parallel process to update an existing set of rules that
govern international disease outbreaks are closer to agreement, sources
said, and could be signed off before the end of the WHO’s annual meeting
on Saturday.
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A medical worker moves a hospital bed carrying a person, outside a
fever clinic of a hospital, after the government eased curbs on the
coronavirus disease (COVID-19) control, in Wuhan, Hubei province,
China December 10, 2022. REUTERS/Martin Pollard/File Photo
 Other negotiators and observers said
there was a sense of urgency in the treaty talks, not least because
of concerns that elections in a number of key countries this year
could bring in right-leaning governments who fear the treaty could
threaten their sovereignty, which the WHO denies and a clause in the
document guards against.
“This needs to be done now or else things are only going to get
worse with things moving to the right,” said one Western diplomat.
(Reporting by Emma Farge and Jennifer Rigby; Editing by Nick Macfie)
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