How the WHO’s pandemic contract should protect the world from crises

How can panic and chaos such as during the Corona pandemic to be prevented in the future? The global community has thought about which reactions are useful and necessary in the event of a new major health emergency.

For this purpose, the members of the World Health Organization (WHO) in Geneva passed a pandemic contract. A new pandemic is only a matter of time, warns WHO boss Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus: “The next pandemic is not a question of” whether “, but the” when “. The most important questions and answers:

It’s all about 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.

Also the Supply chains Should work better: All countries should have access to protective material, medication and vaccine. Health staff should first be cared for worldwide.

The one was also regulated Technology transfer: Pharmaceutical companies should share their know-how so that medication and vaccines can also be produced in other countries.

Research and Development are promoted. 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.

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 states, on the other hand, 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.

In social networks, it is claimed that the WHO can now order compulsory measures in the next pandemic. The conservative Swiss weekly newspaper “Weltwoche” also supports this perspective: “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.

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 – through 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.