The 77th World Health Assembly (WHA) is set to commence tomorrow, with deliberation on the pandemic agreement aimed at strengthening global capacities to respond to future pandemics and outbreaks in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The agreements were reached by World Health Organisation (WHO) member-States and were undertaken to amend International Health Regulations (IHR) and to develop a first-ever pandemic agreement, convention or other legal instrument.
The IHR was first adopted by the World Health Assembly in 1969 and last revised in 2005; conceived to maximise collective efforts to manage public health events while at the same time minimising their disruption to travel and trade.
According to WHO, although there were areas of non-convergence and divergent views in the agreement outcome, the International Negotiating Body (INB) Bureau, which has been guiding the process, will present a report outlining the two-plus years of work on the process, and the outcome of that work, which is the draft text that has been negotiated to date. Options for the next steps to conclude the agreement process will also be put to the WHA for consideration.
WHO Director-General, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said: “Over the past two years, WHO member states have dedicated enormous effort to rise to this challenge posed by COVID-19 and respond to the losses it caused, including at least 7 million lives lost. COVID-19 affected everybody, in many ways, and that is why member states started a process to develop a pandemic agreement to make the world better prepared for the next pandemic. While great progress was made during these negotiations, there are challenges still to overcome. We need to use the World Health Assembly to re-energise us and finish the job at hand, which is to present the world with a generational pandemic agreement.”
The Working Group on the IHR amendments will also be presenting its outcome to the WHA for consideration, including some provisions for which agreement in principle was reached and others that the WGIHR Bureau updated its proposed text for consideration by member states.
