U.S. absent as World Health Assembly adopts pandemic treaty

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WASHINGTON, D.C. May 23 (C-Fam) The governing body of the World Health Organization (WHO) adopted the text of a pandemic agreement that has been under negotiation since the COVID-19 pandemic.  Notably absent from the meeting was the United States, which withdrew from the WHO following the election of President Donald Trump earlier this year.

The aspirational goal of the treaty is to ensure that the world is better prepared for future pandemics, and that access to protective and therapeutic measures is distributed among all countries, including low-income countries.  In practice, the treaty contains relatively little substance, but focuses mainly on process.  It calls for setting up a financing mechanism to coordinate global pandemic responses and calls for participating manufacturers of vaccines and therapeutic interventions to make twenty percent of their “real-time production” available to the WHO, with a minimum threshold of ten percent in the form of a donation to the WHO.

The term “participating manufacturer” remains to be defined in an additional—and highly contested—annex about the sharing of information about potential pathogens, which still needs to be negotiated.

The final version of the treaty dropped some earlier references to “misinformation and disinformation” which prompted concerns that it would be used to censor speech.  The accord now only contains a reference to “[r]ecognizing the importance of building trust and ensuring the timely sharing of information to prevent misinformation, disinformation and stigmatization.”  Also absent from the final draft was the term “infodemic,” which the WHO defines as “too much information including false or misleading information.”

During the COVID-19 pandemic, there were numerous attempts to suppress or discredit information that turned out to be true or at least likely, such as the theory that the virus escaped from the virology lab in Wuhan, China.

In numerous places, the treaty also calls on its parties to ensure that access to “essential health care services” is maintained during pandemics.  During the COVID-19 pandemic, the WHO made it clear that it regarded abortion as an essential health service, and encouraged the provision of abortion pills by telemedicine.

The absence of the U.S. from the final stages of the negotiation and adoption process of the treaty is significant.  On the one hand, other powerful negotiators, such as the European Union, were able to fill the vacuum and ensure that the treaty was ultimately finalized and adopted.  On the other hand, the U.S. and its considerable resources would not be bound by the terms of the treaty, and the WHO’s largest donor is in the process of withdrawing from the organization entirely.

U.S. Secretary for Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. sent a video to the World Health Assembly accusing the WHO of failing to learn the lessons of COVID-19.  He warned that the pandemic treaty “will lock in all of the dysfunction of the WHO pandemic response” by requiring that countries participate in WHO-led bureaucratic mechanisms before, during, and after any eventual pandemic.

Following adoption, the treaty will be deposited with the UN Secretary-General and opened for ratification by member states.  The treaty will enter into force following ratification by sixty countries.  Each member state is expected to notify the WHO director general if it intends to ratify the treaty within eighteen months.

However, the annex must be finalized before the treaty opens for signatures.  Some delegates have expressed hope that it will be finished within a year.

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