A concrete suggestion that could save millions of lives in a future pandemic

The question is not if there will be another pandemic, but when.

For this reason, intense negotiations have been underway for more than two years at the World Health Organization (WHO) to create a Pandemic Agreement that broadly defines how the world can better prevent and prepare for pandemics and outbreaks. , and respond when they occur.

Negotiators meet this week in Geneva in the midst of the penultimate push before the deadline runs out.

Their goal is to adopt a final agreement during the World Health Assembly in May.

These negotiations are vitally important.

Communities around the world continue to suffer from the Covid-19 pandemic.

Families mourn the loss of their loved ones, economies continue to recover and people continue to die, at a rate of 10,000 deaths per month, according to the WHO.

If anything good could come out of this ongoing catastrophe and the deep inequalities it has revealed, it would be a new set of standards accepted by all countries that ensure the immediate detection of a pandemic threat, the rapid development of treatments, tests and vaccines, and essential policies that ensure that life-saving health tools are equally accessible to everyone, without exception.

But time is running out.

The WHO has only reached an agreement once in its 75-year history – the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control in 2003 – and it took seven years to negotiate.

In the race to reach a pandemic agreement in May, there is a real risk that deep divisions on substantive issues, geopolitical tensions and increasing pressure to reach consensus will leave us with a lowest common denominator agreement.

One that essentially does not change the

status quo

in a meaningful way that will protect and save lives during the next pandemic.

However, having followed the negotiations closely, I see several opportunities to help bridge the gap and ensure that all the talk about equity becomes more than just a slogan.

One of them refers to an issue on which, ironically, there is practically unanimous consensus: the need to accelerate and finance research and development (R&D) of new health tools for pandemics and outbreaks, while guaranteeing a equitable access to them throughout the world.

The sticking point is how to do it.

Global health actors demand that the health tools developed by the projects they fund be accessible and that the knowledge generated be widely disseminated

Countries in both the Global South and North have urged that the Pandemic Agreement include a specific obligation to ensure that, where R&D is funded with taxpayer money, the knowledge generated is shared more openly to accelerate research. necessary.

This clause should also ensure that health products – new life-saving treatments, vaccines or tests – resulting from publicly funded R&D are accessible and affordable on an equitable basis, as a public return on those public investments.

There is a specific provision in the current draft of the agreement that obliges all countries to establish these access conditions.

This article had been removed in earlier drafts, before being reinstated last week.

Although other obligations are needed, this is a key step.

It is essential that it be maintained in the final agreement and that all countries support it.

The Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative (DNDi) is a nonprofit R&D organization that develops new, accessible drugs for a range of neglected infectious diseases.

Part of our work (for which we are grateful to have received the Princess of Asturias Award for International Cooperation last year) revolves around including knowledge sharing and access clauses in our agreements with academic and industrial partners, so that we know first-hand that such provisions can speed up research and ensure access to the resulting treatments.

And we are not the only ones.

Global health funders and actors, such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), a foundation developing vaccines against budding infectious diseases, are also demanding that the health tools developed by the projects they finance are accessible and that the knowledge generated is widely disseminated.

During the pandemic agreement negotiations, CEPI noted that if more funders had established clear access clauses in the early days of the Covid pandemic, the number of vaccine doses available to the population of low-income countries low and medium costs could have been much higher and delivered much more quickly.

Only governments have the power and influence to make this happen.

It is estimated that the US government spent $31.9 billion (€29.4 billion) over more than three decades on the pioneering research that led to messenger RNA vaccines.

Let's imagine that these public funds had been linked to well-planned conditions of equitable access.

It is possible that the price of vaccines in the United States would not have skyrocketed after the emergency declaration and that inequalities in access to these vaccines around the world, which led to the loss of millions of lives, would also have been considerably reduced.

These conditions must include affordability;

knowledge management and licensing strategies that accelerate research and facilitate equitable access;

and, if necessary, the transfer of technologies and know-how to enable manufacturing in different regions of the world.

My organization develops treatments for some of the most neglected communities on our planet.

We see the current Pandemic Agreement negotiations as essential, a crucial opportunity to ensure that everyone, regardless of where they live or how much money they have, benefits from scientific advances and has access to the medical tools they need when it hits. the next pandemic.

Governments have a historic opportunity to correct course and ensure they have all the legal and policy tools they need.

They must take advantage of it.

Luis Pizarro

is executive director of the Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative (DNDi).

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