On Tuesday, World Health Organization (WHO) member states adopted the Pandemic Agreement at the seventy-eighth World Health Assembly (WHA). The treaty comes after three years of negotiations. Despite the hard-fought win, the agreement is still not open for signatures as member states must continue to deliberate over an annex section about pathogen access and benefit sharing (PABS).
A PABS system aims to secure pathogen samples for research and development in exchange for prioritizing low- or middle-income countries (LMICs) to access vaccines, therapeutics, and diagnostics. LMICs are often on the front lines of emerging outbreaks. To understand the negotiations that lie ahead for member states as they finalize the PABS provision before next year’s WHA, researchers Mark Eccleston-Turner, Michelle Rourke, and Stephanie Switzer outline the seven core issues creating an impasse between LMICs and high-income countries. The authors note that the attempt to reconcile pathogen and data sharing with pharmaceutical supply and distribution could be overly ambitious and that member states will likely struggle to reach a consensus.
In a second article, Chatham House’s Ebere Okereke explains how the treaty’s lack of enforcement mechanisms and failure to guarantee equitable access to countermeasures or compel rapid data sharing will leave African countries—and all economically constrained nations—exposed to the structural failures observed during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Journalist Emily Bass then travels to Tanzania and Uganda to examine how 100 days of reduced foreign aid and the weakening of the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) has reshaped the everyday existence of people living with HIV.
Next, CFR global health intern Anya Hirschfeld covers the first 100 days of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) agenda—by crafting a report card that examines whether top health officials are honoring the statements they made during confirmation hearings.
Focusing on the intersection of climate and health, former Conference of the Parties (COP) advisors Arthur Wyns and Sindra Sharma, along with UN University Institute for Global Health Director Revati Phalkey, highlight how the WHA provides an opportunity for decision-makers to establish a dialogue that places health at the heart of climate action ahead of November’s COP30 in Brazil.
To wrap up, Kent Buse, Jeni Klugman, and Elhadj As Sy from the Lancet Commission on Gender and Global Health unpack how alcohol and tobacco industries have long leveraged gender frames to market health harming products. To get ahead of those predatory marketing practices, the authors suggest utilizing existing revenue from sin taxes to fund health promotion.
Until next week!—Nsikan Akpan, Managing Editor, and Caroline Kantis, Associate Editor
