While negotiations on the Pandemic Agreement are close to the finish line, the world is already witnessing the next emergency in the making: Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI). It is currently raging through the planet from Antarctica to the United States, infecting birds, cows and other mammals.
WHO Chief Scientist Jeremy Farrar has already labelled HPAI a “global zoonotic – animal- pandemic”. With avian influenza having reached new forms of cross-species transmission, infecting dairy cows and even cats that drank their milk – HPAI risks turning into the next human pandemic.
It is precisely the type of global health challenge that the pandemic agreement should address, especially when considering that HPAI has a human fatality rate of 56%. The latest outbreak is a wake-up call. It shows the great urgency for effective global instruments to prevent other pathogens from evolving the extent to which HPAI already has.
WHO currently assesses the public health risk to the general population posed by HPAI as being low. However, by the time the WHO declares HPAI as a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC) it might be too late. The question is, how do we make sure the pandemic agreement can prevent other pathogens from evolving into outbreaks, epidemics or pandemics before communities and animals suffer?
It is pivotal to get to the roots of the problem. We know, that most emerging infectious diseases are zoonotic, yet it would be completely wrong to blame it on animals.
The drivers are clearly human-caused: factory farming, fur farming and wildlife trade, private keeping of wild animals, and habitat destruction have long been identified as major culprits for the spillover of diseases from animals to humans. When animals and nature suffer, humans suffer.
Given that a staggering 75% of emerging infectious diseases in humans have animal origin, it is obvious that the One Health approach, which recognises the interconnectedness between human, animal, and environmental health, needs to be at the very foundation of the Pandemic Agreement.
Instead of deeply anchoring One Health in this instrument, what we have been seeing at negotiation tables in Geneva is One Health being used as a bargaining chip, even running danger of being carved out of the Pandemic Agreement altogether.