WHO members vote in favour of global pandemic agreement

Members of the World Health Organization voted strongly in favor of a potentially groundbreaking global agreement to improve pandemic preparedness at the World Health Assembly on Monday, UNN reports citing Reuters.

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124 countries voted in favor after Slovakia called for a vote on Monday, amid reports that its prime minister, who is skeptical of the COVID-19 vaccine, demanded that his country challenge the adoption of the agreement, the publication writes. No country voted against, and 11 countries, including Poland, Israel, Italy, Russia, Slovakia and Iran, abstained.

"Governments around the world are making their countries and our interconnected global community more equitable, healthier and safer from the threats posed by pathogens and viruses of pandemic potential," said World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

The draft agreement, which addresses structural inequalities in how medicines, vaccines and medical tools are developed, based on lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic that claimed the lives of millions of people in 2020-2022, will be formally adopted on Tuesday at the plenary session of the World Assembly, the publication writes.

However, as noted, it will officially enter into force only after the approval of the annex on pathogen exchange, which may take up to two years, after which states will have to ratify the agreement.

After three years of difficult negotiations, many diplomats and analysts see the agreement as a victory for global cooperation at a time when multilateral organizations such as the WHO have suffered from a sharp reduction in US foreign funding.

American negotiators left the talks after US President Donald Trump began a 12-month process of withdrawing the US, by far the WHO's largest financial sponsor, from the agency when he took office in January. Given this, the US will not be bound by the agreement, the publication writes.