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While July saw a crush of global pandemic-related meetings – some joint and some clashing – to accommodate tight schedules and northern summer holidays, achieving a pandemic-proof world is still a long way off. 

The two pandemic negotiations underway at the World Health Organization (WHO) have held individual and joint meetings over the past few weeks, with talks dominated by equity, early warnings for pandemics and financing.

The Working Group on amendments to the IHR (WGIHR) is strengthening the International Health Regulations (IHR), the only legally binding global rules governing health emergencies. 

Meanwhile, the Intergovernmental Negotiating Body (INB) is developing a pandemic accord to address other gaps that emerged during COVID-19 – particularly how to ensure equitable access to vaccines and medicines.

Notable progress has been made since May 2023 by the Intergovernmental Negotiating Body to draft and negotiate a WHO convention, agreement or other international instrument on pandemic prevention, preparedness and response (the INB). The Seventy-sixth World Health Assembly in May 2023 played an important role in maintaining the momentum towards our objective to deliver a pandemic accord to the World Health Assembly (WHA) in May 2024. Shortly after, on 12-16 June 2023, the INB Bureau continued its work during the resumed session of the fifth meeting of the INB (INB5 resumed session). The INB considered the Bureau’s text and agreed on innovative ways of working, empowering interested Member States to facilitate informal discussions. We are grateful for the leadership of the WHO Member States that have volunteered to help to bridge the gaps on key issues. Their hard work during the intersessional period will pay off. Once again, our diversity will make us stronger.

India has long been known as the “pharmacy of the world,” producing generic medicines at prices that other developing countries and global institutions can afford. The country was the single largest supplier of pharmaceutical products to Africa in 2018, and accounted for a fifth of the continent’s pharmaceutical imports.

However, as the European Union now negotiates free trade agreements with India and Indonesia — another major generics-producing nation — the bloc’s been proposing far stricter protection of intellectual property rights. And such protection could threaten the affordability of generic medicines these countries export to the Global South.

It’s vital we remember the lessons of the HIV and AIDS pandemic. 

The thorny and unresolved issues of how to incorporate health equity measures and supportive finance for low and middle income countries into revisions of the WHO International Health Regulations (IHR), are set to be two key items on the agenda of an IHR negotiating body when talks resume again in early October. 

This was one of the key messages at the close of the fourth meeting of the WHO Working Group on Amendments to the International Health Regulations, which concluded today after a week of discussions. 

Although most negotiations took place behind closed doors, the meeting report that was discussed briefly in a public session on Friday provided a snippet of the talks so far and the envisioned way forward.  

In the politically charged discussions that current global health negotiations have become, diplomats have to walk a tightrope between delivering on political goals and bringing in concrete reforms to beef up preparedness, prevention and respond to health emergencies. The relative low profile of the discussions surrounding the amendments to the IHR (2005) is in contrast to the optics generated by the negotiations for a Pandemic Accord. This could be partly by design, and partly by the very nature of these discussions that are technical but undoubtedly also political. During the sidelines of the WG-IHR4, Geneva Health Files, spoke with Abdullah Asiri and Ashley Bloomfield, Co-Chairs of the WG-IHR talk about how they see these negotiations progressing. Countries have often described this track fo global helathnegotiations as being efficient and streamlined.

The thorny and unresolved issues of how to incorporate health equity measures and supportive finance for low and middle income countries into revisions of the WHO International Health Regulations (IHR), are set to be two key items on the agenda of an IHR negotiating body when talks resume again in early October. 

This was one of the key messages at the close of the fourth meeting of the WHO Working Group on Amendments to the International Health Regulations, which concluded today after a week of discussions. 

WHO member states came together in recent days in the first substantive joint session that brought together the bureaux of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Body and the Working Group of amendments to the International Health Regulations.

With a mere ten months away from the May 2024 deadline, where both these processes are expected to conclude and culminate in the adoption of new amendments to the IHR and a potentially new pandemic instrument, countries this week grappled with the basics such as what would legally constitute a pandemic, how it would be declared, what kind of actions would it trigger and most importantly, how would these elements sit across the two different, overlapping legal mechanisms. There was also consideration of a few key topics that have featured in both these tracks of negotiations.

… Overlooking the inclusion of Africa CDC, which is the sole continental public health institution, was an unfortunate oversight. As a result, Africa’s health security gaps remain inadequately addressed, leading to the absence of multi-country/regional proposals from the continent. Africa CDC would like to recall that in February 2023, it reiterated its stance as an observer at the Pandemic Fund’s Board, emphasizing the significance of inclusive representation in the Fund’s governance structures, technical teams, and Secretariat to inform its crucial work. Africa CDC would also like to echo the call from African Heads of State and Government for a better representation of Africa in all multilateral constituencies. Africa CDC further urges for equitable representation of African countries and regional organizations in the relevant structures to ensure fair and inclusive outcomes. Therefore, Africa CDC once again urges the Pandemic Fund to take decisive action for the admission of Africa CDC as an Implementing Entity to join the ones identified in 2022.

The fourth meeting of the Working Group on Amendments to the International Health Regulations (WGIHR4) is to discuss various developed country amendment proposals focusing on accelerated information sharing and compliance. These proposals are from the USA, the European Union (EU), Switzerland and New Zealand. WGIHR4 will take place at the WHO Headquarters in Geneva on 24-28 July in a hybrid mode. … The third meeting of WGIHR had focussed on amendment proposals on Article 13 (public health response), new article 13 A (equitable access to health products, technologies and know-how), 43 (additional health measures), 44 (collaboration and cooperation), new article 44A (financing mechanism), New Article 53A (implementation and compliance). This week the majority of the amendment proposals under consideration are from developed countries. Many of these aim at enhancing the obligations on information sharing and compliance that on the surface seem reasonable but can be negative for developing countries.

High cost has prevented some cancer drugs from being included in the World Health Organization’s (WHO) updated Essential Medicines List (EML) and Essential Medicines for List Children (EMLc) released on Wednesday.

These include “patented, highly-priced” treatments for lung and breast cancer.

“With the cancer medicines, we are facing now an issue where we have a very high burden of disease and very expensive, highly-priced medicines,” said Dr Benedikt Huttner, secretary of the expert committee that advises the WHO on the EML.

“For some of the medicines [cost] was one of the factors leading the expert committee not to recommend them currently,” Huttner told a WHO global press conference.