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Mahesh

27/05/24 05:27 AM IST

Pandemic response rules

In News
  • Health officials from the 194 member states of the World Health Organization hope next week to complete more than two years of negotiations on new rules for responding to pandemics when they gather in Geneva.
Pandemic Treaty
  • The WHO already has binding rules known as the International Health Regulations (2005) which set out countries’ obligations where public health events have the potential to cross national borders.
  • These include advising the WHO immediately of a health emergency and measures on trade and travel.
  • Adopted after the 2002/3 SARS outbreak, these regulations are still seen as functional for regional epidemics such as Ebola but inadequate for a global pandemic.
  • Much of the impetus for a separate treaty comes from a desire to address the COVID-era shortcomings of the current system, chiefly avoiding a repeat of the “vaccine apartheid” denounced repeatedly by Tedros, and ensuring faster, more transparent information sharing and cooperation
  • Article 12, envisages reserving around 20% of tests, treatments and vaccines for the WHO to distribute to poorer countries during emergencies although the exact portion is still contested, negotiators say.
  • It would be only the second such health accord after the 2003 Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, a treaty which aims to reduce smoking via taxation and rules on labelling and advertising.
Global Health Rules
  • Updates to the IHR rules include a new alerts system for communicating different risk assessments for future outbreaks, following criticism that cumbersome existing rules slowed the global response to the COVID-19 emergency.
  • Currently, the WHO has only one level of emergency – a public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC) – whereas the new system envisages an intermediary stage called an “early action alert”.
  • Negotiators are also considering a “pandemic emergency” for the most serious public health threats, addressing a gap in its current system which does not use the term pandemic at all.
  • Other revisions include attempts to bolster states’ obligations, in one case strengthening language on their duties to inform the WHO on public health events from “may” to “should”.
Way Forward
  • The new IHR rules and the pandemic accord are designed to complement each other and views vary over whether one could exist without the other.
  • Sources say the IHR talks are more advanced and more likely to pass, with negotiations close to completion.
  • However, two Western diplomats expressed fears that those seeking big concessions on the pandemic treaty will hold the IHR talks “hostage”.
  • Unlike the treaty, which would require ratification to take effect, possibly taking years, the IHR changes take effect automatically after 12 months unless countries opt out.
  • The co-chair of the treaty talks, Roland Driece from the Netherlands,that it was unlikely that full agreement would be reached by the WHA meeting.
Source- Indian Express

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