WHO draft Pandemic Treaty provides “a glimmer of hope” after “trauma” of COVID-19

Responding to the circulation of a Zero Draft of the WHO Pandemic Treaty, Mohga Kamal-Yanni, Policy Co-Lead for the People’s Vaccine Alliance, said

“After the collective trauma of the COVID-19 pandemic, we have a glimmer of hope. This text contains measures to provide everyone, everywhere with access to the tools needed to prevent and combat pandemics. However, this is a draft, not a final text. Governments need to demonstrate their commitment to a treaty based on equity and human rights.

“Building manufacturing capacity in developing countries is critical to controlling pandemics, which will ultimately save lives everywhere. And it will address the injustice of the COVID-19 and AIDS pandemics that saw people in lower-income countries forced to wait at the back of the line for vaccines, tests, and treatments.

“To achieve this, we need more than just words. Governments must commit to sharing medical technology and knowhow. The intellectual property rules that uphold pharmaceutical company monopolies must be waived automatically when a health emergency is declared. And governments must place conditions to ensure that publicly funded innovations are available to manufacturers in the global south.

“As negotiations over a Pandemic Treaty begin in earnest, governments must look to the greed, nationalism, and profiteering that characterised the world’s response to COVID-19 and say: ‘never again.”

/Ends

Notes for editors

An advance copy of the Zero Draft of the WHO Pandemic has been circulated to non-state actors and is available on the Knowledge Ecology International website: https://www.keionline.org/wp-content/uploads/WHO-zero-draft-pandemic-treaty-1Feb2023.pdf

The People’s Vaccine Alliance is a global coalition of more than 100 civil society organisations, former world leaders, faith leaders, economists, scientists, unions, and experts campaigning for a fairer global response to COVID-19 and other health crises: https://peoplesvaccine.org/supporters/

Media contact

Joe Karp-Sawey, Senior Media Advisor, People’s Vaccine Alliance

[email protected]