Health: WHO pandemic contract should prevent panic and chaos in the future

The global community wants to prevent panic and chaos such as during the Corona pandemic in the case of a new major health emergency. For this purpose, the members of the World Health Organization (WHO) in Geneva passed a pandemic contract. The international contract was negotiated in the record time of a good three years. The delegations celebrated the assumption with persistent applause.

From the perspective of the WHO members, a contract was necessary because a situation similar to Corona pandemic is to be feared. WHO boss Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warns: “The next pandemic is not a question of” whether “, but the” when “”. The most important questions and answers:

What went wrong with the Corona pandemic?

When Coronavirus Sars-Cov-2 spread all over the world in 2020, many countries reacted with panic. Masks and protective material were scarce. Governments contested each other orders, many imposed export barriers for such material, including Germany. When the vaccine was finally there, the vaccine doses hoarded, the USA and India stopped all exports. And while the third vaccination has already been administered in rich countries, people in poorer countries were still waiting for the first delivery.

The consequences: estimated 36 million deaths worldwide – by an infection or because they could not be treated because of other diseases in pandemic. The economy collapsed worldwide, millions of small businesses went bankrupt.

What will be different with the contract?

Prevention: Countries undertake to strengthen their health systems and the monitoring of the animal kingdom in such a way that outbursts of illness are quickly discovered and suffocated in the bud if possible.

Suppliers: All countries should have access to protective material, medication and vaccine. Health staff should first be cared for worldwide.

Technology transfer: Pharmaceutical companies should share your know-how so that medication and vaccines can also be produced in other countries.

Research and development: DNA sequences of pathogenic – such as viruses, bacteria or other microorganisms – are to be freely available for the development of medication and vaccines. In return, the WHO will donate ten percent of their production to distribution in poorer countries and give another ten percent at affordable prices – the so -called Pabs system.

Have all expectations been met?

The bottom line – but numerous compromises were necessary in the three years of negotiations. For example, Europeans wanted stronger requirements for prevention: Governments are supposed to monitor disease events in the animal world because pathogens can adapt from there to people. Poor countries referred to the high costs. The African countries, in turn, would have liked to have seen stricter requirements in the Pabs system and in the technology transfer, as well as clear financing aids to strengthen health systems.

Why do populists warn of the contract?

Conspiracy theorists, especially in social networks, claim that WHO can now order compulsory measures in the next pandemic. The conservative Swiss weekly newspaper “Weltwoche” also blows into this notch: “With the new contractual work, the WHO would actually be the most powerful authority in the world, an authority that decides on the state of emergency,” she writes.

This is wrong. Article 22 of the Pandemie Treaty expressly states that neither the WHO nor its general director order domestic measures, impose travel restrictions, enforce vaccinations or order lockdowns. The contract only applies in countries that ratify it. There are no punitive measures in the contract if a country does not meet its obligations.

The modalities of the PABS system were outsourced to an appendix that still has to be negotiated. That should take another year. Only then can the contract be submitted to the governments for ratification. He only comes into force when 60 countries have ratified it. The WHO currently still has 194 member states, but the United States and Argentina have announced their resignation.