1. The World Health Organization's (WHO) Intergovernmental Negotiating Body finalized a proposal for the WHO Pandemic Agreement on April 16, after three-and-a-half years and 13 rounds of meetings.
2. The draft agreement, termed as a 'generational accord to make the world safer', is scheduled for adoption by the World Health Assembly in May 2024.
3. The agreement faced challenges in negotiations with developed countries reluctant to commit to sharing diagnostics, treatments, vaccines and technology transfers, while developing countries were hesitant to share pathogen samples and genome sequences without guaranteed access to medical resources.
4. The situation mirrors Indonesia's protest in the mid-2000s regarding inequitable H5N1 sample sharing mechanism, where there was no assured access to vaccines developed using their samples.
5. All member countries unanimously agreed to better protect healthcare workers as the first article of the agreement.
6. A groundbreaking achievement of the agreement is the establishment of a pathogen access and benefit sharing system, ensuring developing countries that share pathogen samples and genome sequence data receive access to diagnostics, vaccines, or treatments developed using their contributions.
7. Pharmaceutical companies have agreed to donate 10% of their production to WHO and offer an additional 10% at affordable prices.
8. The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted vaccine distribution inequity, with developed countries stockpiling vaccines while developing nations, particularly in Africa, faced significant delays in vaccine access.
9. The agreement stipulates that technology transfer for vaccine manufacturing during pandemics will occur on 'mutually agreed terms' rather than the 'voluntary' basis preferred by pharmaceutical companies.
10. The treaty emphasizes that countries should promote and facilitate the exchange of technology and know-how to enable developing countries to manufacture their own vaccines.
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