At stake is the possibility of preventing the next global infectious crisis from becoming another personal and collective catastrophe. The differences between rich and poor countries, the distortion of the geopolitical context and the greedy interference of private interests threaten to pulverize two years of negotiations.

The main difficulties for the agreement are concentrated in two minefields of global health: the control of knowledge and the distribution of available resources. For the global South, correcting the deep inequities and inefficiencies of the Covid-19 response will only be possible if the North facilitates the distributed production of diagnostics, treatments and vaccines.