The delegates of the WHO Member States found, this Saturday, April 12, “an agreement in principle” in a text on Saturday, April 12, which should allow the world to protect the world from future pandemics after more than three years of discussions, said the co -president of the AFP negotiation agency.
“We have an agreement in principle and we reserve the final agreement of the capitals,” said Anne-Claire Amprou, co-president of the negotiation agency and the French global health ambassador, specifying that the delegates will meet on Tuesday, April 15 in Geneva to prepare the text and give their final agreement.
The text will still have to be adopted in the World Health Assembly, which is held in May in Geneva, by all member countries of the World Health Organization. After a marathon negotiation session of almost 24 hours, the delegates applauded everything and spent long minutes to congratulate each other.
“This is a very good sign. You are part of an incredible story in the process of being done,” said WHO general director Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who remained in the room with the delegates all night.
In the heart of debates, the transfer of technologies
One of the main dispute points on Friday was paragraph 11 of this text of about thirty pages, which defines the transfer of technology for the production of health products related to pandemics, particularly for the benefit of developing countries, several sources indicated AFP. Latin American countries press so that this transfer is facilitated.
The subject had been in the heart of the complaints of the most disadvantaged countries during the Cavid-19 pandemic, when they saw rich countries take the doses of vaccines and other tests.
Several countries, where the pharmaceutical industry weighs largely in the economy, oppose the idea of the transfer obligation and insist on its voluntary nature. According to a delegate, this point has been established, but the latest version of the text was not yet available on Saturday morning.
For the ambassador, “we had to negotiate this week with all member states in a very constructive and very positive approach, it is a real desire to have an agreement that really makes a difference and that allows to prevent, prepare, respond to the pandemics.”
United States, much absent from negotiations
Only experience will say if the fire test survives: an upcoming pandemic, including the WHO head, Tedros Adhanom ghebreyesus, recalls the desire that it is not about knowing “if it will happen but when.”
It is adopted in a context of a serious multilateralism crisis and the global health system caused by the Brutal American Cup of International Aid of the United States decided by President Donald Trump, while the United States was, with much, the main humanitarian donor.
They were also the great absent of these negotiations, President Trump announced on his return to the White House that the country left the organization. According to experts, a withdrawal that makes risks weigh on the international surveillance system for health risks.
A less ambitious project
In December 2021, two years after the start of the Covid-19 Pandemia that left millions of deaths and put the global economy on their knees, WHO member countries had decided to provide the world with a text to allow and better administer the pandemics.
Saturday’s document lost brightness compared to starting ambitions, explains James Packard Love, executive director of the NGO Knowledge Ecology International, which has followed negotiations from the beginning.
“The initial proposals presented by the Secretariat were quite ambitious. This is no longer the case now, because the negotiations have dragged” and the representatives of the various industries were involved, says James Packard Love, and adds that in his eyes “there are many advantages to obtain an agreement.”
The H5N1 aviar flu, whose virus continues to infect new species, which increases the fear that the transmission between humans is only a matter of time, but also measles outbreaks in 58 countries due to sufficient vaccination rate due to distrust of vaccines excited by misinformation, or even the MPOX that is scolded in Africa, are all aviated.
Source: BFM TV
