Pandemic Preparedness Treaty: Global Leaders Push For One Health Approach

A call came in a joint article published in international newspapers on Tuesday, penned by leaders from five continents.

The signatories included Germany’s Angela Merkel, Britain’s Boris Johnson, France’s Emmanuel Macron, South Korea’s Moon Jae-in, South Africa’s Cyril Ramaphosa, Indonesia’s Joko Widodo and Chile’s Sebastian Pinera.

Leaders from 25 countries, the European Union and the World Health Organization (WHO) sought to get the ground rules down in writing to streamline and speed up the reaction to future global outbreaks.

The treaty would aim to ensure that information, virus pathogens, technology to tackle the pandemic and products such as vaccines are shared swiftly and equitably among nations.

In other words the treaty seeks to solve and address the problems of data sharing , techology sharing, and strenghtnening national capacity.

Leaders from key world powers including the United States, China, Russia and Japan are not among the signatories so far.

First proposed by European Council president Charles Michel at the United Nations in December, the notion of a treaty has since been endorsed by EU and G7 countries.

The International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers and Associations (IFPMA) lobby group said the importance of incentives to develop tests, treatments and vaccines should be reflected in the treaty.

“The biopharmaceutical industry and its supply chain is part of the solution for future pandemics and therefore should play a role in shaping an international pandemic treaty,” IFPMA chief Thomas Cueni said in a statement.

The joint article said the additional treaty should be aimed at “greatly enhancing international cooperation” on alert systems, data-sharing and research to help track rising threats and the production of vaccines, medicines and protective equipment to tackle diseases.

World Health Organisation (WHO) Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus says, in May as Members States of World Health Assembly seats  there will be a resolution on the Proposal.

Pandemic Preparedness Treaty is a global move to ratify one health system riding on the covid-19 vaccine equity drive to all nations of the world.