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Our goal is clear: to craft an agreement of the highest caliber. We envision a treaty that sets new standards in global health governance, one that is more than merely serviceable but truly transformative. To achieve this, the Africa Group insists on elements of equity and solidarity in all its provisions for all people, everywhere. An agreement not based on equity will be a betrayal to 18% of the world population which is not only the poorest, but also with the health systems that are already challenged to cope with pandemics. Therefore, we cannot accept an agreement not founded on equity. This principle must be fundamental to the treaty, ensuring no nation or individual is left behind in our global response to pandemics.

Full statement here

A pandemic agreement will only be meaningful if its provisions contribute to changing the status quo. This is particularly important to ensure equity in access to pandemic products. The text before us does not meet this requirement and will need strengthening in the area of pathogen access and benefit sharing and access to and sharing of IP and know-how, including undisclosed information.

Equitable access will also require expanding production capacity in various regions of the world to be ready well before the next pandemic and this requires transfer of technology, know-how and IP.

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The World Health Organization (WHO) has resumed the negotiations for a legally binding international instrument on pandemic prevention, preparedness and response. The goal is to conclude the negotiations in time for adoption by a special session of the World Health Assembly (WHA) in December 2024, or at the Seventy-eighth WHA in May 2025.  

The Group of Equity in the negotiations taking place in an Intergovernmental Negotiating Body (INB) brings together a large number of developing countries.

Click here for the statement delivered by Malaysia on behalf of the Group of Equity at the opening of the 12th session of the INB on 4 November:

A recent article published by HPW based on research by Matthew Herder and Ximena Benavides made several criticisms and observations about the mRNA programme. HPW asked the mRNA co-leaders, the MPP and WHO, to respond to the issues raised and this is their response. 

The mRNA Technology Transfer Programme, established by the World Health Organization (WHO) in partnership with the Medicines Patent Pool (MPP), was launched in July 2021 in response to the COVID-19 pandemic to address the global inequities in vaccine manufacturing. Its primary aim is to build mRNA vaccine manufacturing capacity in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), thus bolstering health security through local and regional production.

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The establishment of an “mRNA hub” in South Africa to build the capacity of low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) to develop vaccines during the COVID-19 pandemic was widely hailed as a solution to Africa’s lack of manufacturing ability.

But three years after its launch in June 2021, the hub faces uncertainties, risks and shortfalls –  including that it may simply become a “technological solution” that maintains the status quo rather than a genuine transfer of knowledge and capacity to LMICs, according to a recent report

Special index page with links to over 35 editions of GHF, including a series of exclusive stories, guest essays, interviews, podcasts from the second quarter of 2024 between April and June, compiled by Sana Ali.

Group 1 'Treaty talks' comprises posts regarding the WG IHRs and the INB for a pandemic agreement. See in particular the posts regarding the politics of the Africa position and various reports regarding pathogen access and benefit sharing, financing, 'equity', and technology transfer.

Group 2 includes a range of posts, including comments on WHA77 and WHO financing (the 'investment round').

Group 3 includes a number of guest essays, including One Health and PABS in the draft pandemic agreement

While this week’s CARICOM summit in Grenada has been postponed due to Hurricane Beryl, when it does convenes, a key item on the agenda will be the new ‘HeDPAC’ initiative to deepen South-South partnerships to meet shared global health challenges – from pandemic threats to climate change.

In remote communities of Guyana, the introduction of new satellite technology is enabling freshly trained community health workers to get patients an accurate diagnosis and rapid, appropriate treatment in ways unimaginable only a few years ago.  

In Rwanda, meanwhile, the government’s achievement in getting the COVID-19 vaccine innovator, BioNTech, to set up its first mRNA manufacturing facility in Kigali is a success story that small island states in the Caribbean would love to emulate. 

The World Trade Organization (WTO) Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) Council will meet on 10-11 July. On the agenda is the review of the implementation of the TRIPS Agreement under TRIPS Article 71.1, as proposed by Colombia. It would be the first time such a review is taking place in the 30 years that the TRIPS Agreement has been in force.

In recent days, access to medicines activists in many parts of the world are grappling with developments that have struck at the heart of the movement.

Médecins Sans Frontières, arguably one of the most powerful, influential and well-funded activist organization in the space, has proposed a restructuring its well-regarded and highly admired Access Campaign that currently works all over the world in the most political and challenging settings and one that consistently led and expanded the access to medical products for a range of diseases. MSF has programmes in more than 75 countries across the world.

From ensuring treatments, to challenging patents, from fighting for lower prices of drugs, to working with governments silently to improve health outcomes, the Access Campaign has been at the frontier of not only taking on the might of the pharmaceutical industry, but also making states more accountable.

1. The Kyoto Biennial Conference of the International Law Association was convened remotely as in December 2020 the COVID-19 pandemic precluded in-person gatherings. The Lisbon Biennial in July 2022 was among the first in-person events attended by many of its participants as the shadow of the pandemic dissipated. As the ILA prepares for its Athens Biennial in June 2024 the international community has largely returned to “normalcy” from a public health standpoint. Yet unfinished business from the COVID-19 pandemic remains as we seek to lay the groundwork for preventing and mitigating future pandemics. In a paradoxical sense, the COVID-19 pandemic opened a window of opportunity for governments and civil society to put in place institutional mechanisms to accomplish these objectives. Yet that window may not remain open for long. Planning and spending time to address low probability, high risk events – paradigmatically pandemics -- does not occupy a high government priority because returns on investment are uncertain, and political leaders are not likely to be credited by their constituencies for spending to address uncertainties.