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Will the world be ready for the next pandemic?

2024-04-06 13:03:06Kosova&Bota SHKRUAR NGA NGA MICHAEL PEEL

Will the world be ready for the next pandemic?

Last month, officials from 194 countries gathered in a meeting to discuss and agree on a global plan to deal with a threat known as "Disease X". The code name refers to the still unknown disease that is expected to plague the world one day, in a recurrence of Covid-19, or that could possibly cause even greater damage.

This fear has so far prompted 9 rounds of difficult international negotiations on the text of the world's first pandemic treaty, on which a consensus must be reached before the May meeting of the World Health Organization's annual assembly.

The agreement aims to help governments, institutions and the population avoid mistakes made during the Covid-19 pandemic. But getting to that point is causing major divisions. In talks taking place online and in person in Geneva, low- and middle-income countries are pressing rich countries and pharmaceutical companies to go much further than they have before in sharing life-saving health resources. of people.

Some conservatives in the US and beyond claim that the treaty is already too broad. When the last round of talks ended without a deal on March 28, Fox News reported: "Disease X: Critics say with WHO treaty, Biden administration is selling out US sovereignty."

Meanwhile, growing geopolitical tensions between powerful countries and political changes within some of them threaten to undermine the treaty's goals. At the center of the controversy is WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who remains convinced that countries will eventually agree on some version of the agreement.

"They know who wants what. That's why it's time to have an agreement now," he says. But analysts are concerned that the landmark agreement, the most ambitious of a number of initiatives to improve pandemic preparedness, may not materialize.

And such an outcome would undermine broader efforts to remedy the serious failures of monitoring, response and international cooperation that caused the millions of deaths and severe economic and social damage caused by Covid-19.

"I hope the experience of the pandemic will remind people that when these events happen, certainly on such a large scale, they become real concerns for global security," says Richard Hatchett, executive head of the International Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations ( CORNER).

"When infectious diseases get out of control, health, economic and even national security is put at risk," he emphasizes. Countries should therefore seize the opportunity to overhaul the architecture of the world's health system, instead of forgetting the lessons we learned from Covid-19, says Ashley Bloomfield, former health official in New Zealand, currently co-director of the WHO a parallel global negotiation to amend the International Health Regulations.

Responses to pandemic disease outbreaks have historically been a cycle of panic and neglect. "This is part of our survival strategy. There is almost a collective global amnesia about pandemics" - she says, while adding that fortunately there is a large degree of commitment from the states.

"They recognize their responsibility, and the moment to take preventive measures is right now," adds Bloomfield. As long as people are always surrounded by infectious diseases, the next pandemic has been a matter of time and not a dilemma of whether it will appear or not.

However, the Covid-19 pandemic highlighted that many risk factors are greater today than at any other time in history. The world today is populated by more people, who live more densely and who travel more. These trends, plus increasingly intensive agriculture and animal husbandry, and an unregulated animal trade, have increased the risk of zoonotic diseases, where pathogens are transmitted from animals to humans.

Zoonotic threats have long been with us—rabies and salmonella are two examples—and they account for quite a few newly identified infectious diseases and some of the most worrisome health threats of recent times, such as the Ebola virus that caused an epidemic in Africa. West in 2014.

These factors, combined with the bitter experience of Covid-19, gave rise to the idea of ​​an international treaty on pandemic preparedness and response. In a joint paper published in March 2021, more than 20 world leaders, including Britain, France, South Africa and Indonesia, proposed an agreement to "foster an intergovernmental approach and of all societies".

Their goal was to improve global cooperation in alert systems, data sharing and scientific research, as well as the production and distribution of health "countermeasures" such as vaccines, medicines, diagnostics and personal protective equipment.

Of course, even if it ends up being drafted and adopted, the treaty on the pandemic would constitute an ethical and not a legal obligation for states. Its specific funding requirements are limited, and will not contain a mechanism to hold countries accountable for violating it.

But the current draft has raised accusations that a seizure of WHO power is being attempted, despite the latter's denial of this charge. Also, the draft agreement has revived criticism from people who are generally suspicious of multilateral institutions.

On the other hand, a major source of disagreement has been over the discovery and sharing of information about new pathogens. The Equality Group, made up of Asian, African and Latin American countries, wants stronger rules.

This would also include pharmaceutical companies, which should help fund the monitoring of new pathogens, which would accelerate vaccine development efforts. The genetic information would be shared through a mechanism known as the Pathogen Access and Benefit Sharing System (PABS).

But this proposal has encountered strong opposition from the pharmaceutical industry. "In negotiations, there is an implicit threat that if you don't pay, they won't share the information," says Thomas Cueni, outgoing head of the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers and Associations.

"And that would be like shooting yourself in the foot. "Making money from access to pathogens is something forbidden," he emphasizes. Pharmaceutical companies are ready to help improve aspects of pandemic preparedness. But it wants to avoid giving up intellectual property rights for the vaccines, as exclusive rights to the drugs are the foundation of their business model.

Instead, Cueni proposes maintaining voluntary cooperation. This would involve sharing information between companies that discover vaccines, and large generic drug makers that can mass-produce them, such as the Serum Institute of India. The final negotiations will be a test of whether the countries can put aside their differences and come together for the common good.

Taken with abbreviations from "Financial Times", adapted to Shqip Gazeta Si


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