After three years of work, the World Health Organization’s Intergovernmental Negotiating Body is meeting this week for its final scheduled round of negotiations on a global pandemic agreement. The stakes couldn’t be higher.
The agreement’s obligations, ranging from diversified production of medical countermeasures to disease spillover prevention, are potentially transformative. Its institutional frameworks would allow the agreement to grow in ambition and scope.
While negotiators remain divided on obligations for pandemic prevention, technology transfer, and pathogen access and benefit sharing, or PABS, negotiating gaps have narrowed, including over the last few days. Reaching consensus now is critical, ahead of May’s World Health Assembly negotiating deadline.
About the authors
Alexandra Finch
Alexandra Finch is a senior associate at the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law and an adjunct professor of law at Georgetown University Law Center.
Lawrence O. Gostin@lawrencegostin
Lawrence O. Gostin is distinguished professor of global health law at Georgetown University and faculty director at the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law. He is a member of the Panel for a Global Public Health Convention.
Dame Barbara Stocking
Dame Barbara Stocking is president emerita of Murray Edwards College, University of Cambridge, the chair of the Panel for a Global Public Health Convention, and former chief executive of Oxfam GB.
