Pandemic Treaty: Representative Smith Addresses the Press on the WHO

Paresh Jadhav

11 months ago

The Committee conducted an in-depth and serious evaluation of this unprecedented crisis and its response, holding 17 hearings, consulting with EU and world governments’ authorities, requesting documents, commissioning studies and undertaking 6 missions.

Representative Smith represents Douglas, Ozark, Stone and Taney counties of southern Missouri.

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WHO’s ‘Pandemic Treaty’

After the COVID-19 Pandemic, countries started work on an international instrument to enhance global health security. Two years later, an initial draft – known as “zero draft” has been made public for discussion and further examination.

Georgetown University’s O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law, a World Health Organization Collaborating Center, has organized broad civil society engagement in treaty negotiations. Civil society members representing different sectors such as global health, law, humanitarian aid, charitable fundraising, government patient advocacy advocacy and academia are joining experts from international health to offer technical advice and insights.

Negotiators are in the final stage of an ambitious effort to reach agreements on significant commitments that will reduce future pandemic risks, prevent any repeat of significant human and economic costs associated with pandemics, and implement One Health approaches for prevention and response. With only two official negotiations sessions left to go through this process, however, it remains uncertain if they can do so successfully.

Vaccines

Vaccines are substances composed of attenuated, inactivated or dead organisms (or their purified products) designed to produce an immune response without risking disease. Today there is an assortment of different vaccines on the market, such as live attenuated viruses, recombinant proteins and adjuvants such as aluminum or oil-in-water emulsions that stimulate this beneficial immune response and stimulate its benefits.

Vaccines provide protection from disease while alleviating healthcare system pressures, while also showing greater economic advantages.

Vaccines do more than keep individuals healthy; they protect entire communities against infectious diseases that spread rapidly – known as herd immunity. When vaccination rates decline, outbreaks occur rapidly. That’s why the United States is committed to the 2022 COVID-19 Global Action Plan by providing safe and effective vaccines, supporting country-level buildback plans, strengthening global supply chains with diverse and resilient supply chains and manufacturing capacities, reforming biosecurity infrastructures globally, as well as reforming global biosecurity infrastructures.

Treatment

After the COVID-19 pandemic, all 194 members of WHO agreed to launch negotiations on a global agreement to strengthen pandemic prevention, preparedness, and response. An intergovernmental negotiating body has been created for these negotiations that are occurring concurrently with discussions regarding amendments to International Health Regulations.

Draft of Pandemic Accord currently under consideration includes both an intergovernmental negotiating body proposal and draft text of treaty itself, but questions still exist as the process moves forward.

Georgetown University law professor Lawrence Gostin, who is playing an instrumental role in negotiations for a pandemic accord at the 2024 World Health Assembly, remains “confident” that countries will agree upon such an accord at that event; however, its effectiveness depends on having strong norms such as equitable sharing of lifesaving medicines and One Health approaches for zoonotic disease prevention; furthermore it must include robust enforcement mechanisms – an issue which would require the U.S. to reconsider their long-standing undervaluing diplomatic engagement with Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa; according to him this would require reconsidering longstanding undervaluations of diplomatic engagement from Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa by the U.S.

Prevention

The COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated that prevention is better than cure. Instead of just reacting to outbreaks, we require an international treaty outlining best practices to avoid future outbreaks.

Science and experience show us that we can reduce EIDs, including pandemics, through stopping their spread and evolution. Common causes of pathogen spillover deforestation in hotspots for emerging diseases, wildlife trade, and agricultural practices that contribute to climate change can be addressed with targeted investments.

Unfortunately, the draft WHO CA+ fails to address the shortcomings revealed by this epidemic and instead rewards China by absolving it for exacerbating or even creating it, and rewarding Beijing’s theft of health technology. Therefore, the United States cannot support this treaty until significant improvements are made – until then, global pandemics remain at risk.