World Health Organization members vote for global pandemic treaty

(Patria) - Members of the World Health Organization (WHO) voted at the assembly for a potentially groundbreaking global agreement to improve pandemic preparedness, Reuters reported.

One hundred and twenty-four countries voted in favor, after Slovakia called for a vote on Monday, as its vaccine-skeptic prime minister demanded his country challenge the adoption of the agreement. No country voted against, while eleven countries, including Poland, Israel, Italy, Russia, Slovakia, and Iran, abstained.

"Governments around the world are making their countries and our interconnected global community fairer, healthier, and safer from the threats posed by pathogens and viruses of pandemic potential," said WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

The draft agreement, which addresses structural inequities in how drugs or vaccines and health tools are developed, after lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic that killed millions between 2020 and 2022, will be formally adopted today at a plenary session of the World Health Assembly in Geneva.

However, the agreement will not formally enter into force until an annex on pathogen sharing is negotiated, which could take up to two years, after which countries will have to ratify the agreement.

After three years of difficult negotiations, many diplomats and analysts saw the agreement as a victory for global cooperation at a time when multilateral organizations like the WHO are affected by sharp cuts in US foreign funding.

US negotiators left discussions after President Donald Trump began the twelve-month process of withdrawing, by far the largest financial sponsor of the WHO, from the agency when he took office in January. Given this, the US would not be bound by the agreement.