The need for a pandemic treaty and what to expect from it

Shaken by the human, social and economic consequences of the pandemic and due to the evident failures of the current system of surveillance, preparation and response to this type of situation, the 194 member states of the World Health Organization (WHO) They approved this Wednesday 1 by consensus a process to negotiate a legal instrument so that the world is prepared for the next pandemic that arrives.

Experts are practically unanimous in stating that there will be a next pandemic, which will most likely be caused by a disease of animal origin that will pass to humans and that the only unknown is how long it will take to happen.

How are pandemics managed today?

The first international health regulations were adopted in the middle of the last century, in 1973 and 1981, but they suffered from several shortcomings, such as their dependence on notifications from countries to function or a limited list of diseases and surveillance provisions that focused on the entry and exit points of the affected countries.

The great regulatory reform occurred with the International Health Regulations (IHR), approved in 2005, after the appearance in 2003 of the Acute and Severe Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), the first disease that fully showed how the interconnectedness of the world favors the uncontrolled spread of new infectious diseases.

One of the major novelties established by the IHR was the obligation for all countries to have systems to detect, evaluate and respond to situations that could represent a threat to international public health, and to notify the rest of the world of this fact, through of the WHO.

What went wrong in the international management of the pandemic?

The magnitude of the current health crisis has shown the limits of the IHR – an instrument of mandatory compliance – for the coordination of an effective international response to the pandemic, a word that does not even appear as such in the text.

What first came to light was that only a minority of countries have the epidemiological surveillance system established by the IHR. An estimated two-thirds of WHO Member States were unprepared for a pandemic and the main reason for this has been their lack of resources.

On the other hand, the weakness of the WHO when handling an emergency like the current one was highlighted, as well as the lack of transparency, an accusation that falls particularly on China, which has been reluctant to cooperate and has not facilitated the work scientists to identify the origin of the coronavirus.

The IHR is not strong and effective enough to avoid the lack of solidarity and cooperation that has been seen in the last two years, especially regarding the access of countries with fewer resources to the main instruments to face this emergency: vaccines, tests, treatments and other supplies and equipment.

What is a treaty on pandemics looking for?

The WHO today launched a process to negotiate an international legal instrument on pandemics that could take the form of a convention or an agreement between countries, with many of them having already expressed their preference for the first of these forms, since its weight political would be more forceful.

The only precedent of this nature is the Tobacco Control Convention, also negotiated within the framework of the WHO, an international agreement adopted in 2003 and which currently has 182 States parties, covering 90% of the world’s population. .

The approved negotiation will begin no later than next March, it will be conducted by an intergovernmental negotiating body and will seek to cover all the gaps identified in the IHR and strengthen the WHO, on which many criticisms have fallen, but which is under-financed by the Member States , with the limitations that this implies.

What would change?

Among the ideas that circulate is that of creating mechanisms to ensure that countries will comply with the new regulations and require that scientific evidence be presented to justify measures that interfere with travel or international trade.

Likewise, it is proposed to strengthen the power of the WHO to access all possible sources of information on epidemic outbreaks and to force countries to accept the scientific missions that this entity decides to send.

Despite the recognition that this process is indispensable, the negotiations will lead to tensions, particularly on the part of countries that feel that the need for effective coordination and collaboration collides with their sovereignty or with their interests.