As 194 nations continue to work through drafts of pandemic agreements that would grant more authority to the World Health Organization (WHO), a body convened by the WHO is calling for a worldwide pandemic simulation to be carried out by the end of this year to test the effectiveness of the new terms before member nations sign them in 2024.
Ambassador Pamela Hamamoto is currently negotiating terms of the WHO pandemic accord on behalf of the United States. While the language of the accord and IHR revisions is often opaque and bureaucratic, analysts say the ultimate goal of the reforms is to vest more pandemic authority within the WHO and have this authority extend beyond pandemic emergencies.
Negotiations Proceed in Secret
In April, delegates from the United States agreed with a Chinese proposal that new IHR drafts would not be shared with the public. Hamamoto stated that “at this stage, I have some concern about sharing the draft to all stakeholders given where we are in the process.”“The attempt to create a veil of secrecy now surrounding the substantive and technical text-based negotiations on the WHO pandemic treaty sets a dangerous precedent for norm-setting at the multilateral level,” they wrote. “It also undermines trust in the process at a time when attacks on the WHO and on the pandemic accord are increasing.”
The GPMB’s Manifesto for Preparedness states that “the success of these reforms will largely be dependent on the adoption of a coordinated, One Health approach to PPPR that involves all countries, international and regional organizations, financial institutions, and the private sector.”
PPPR is the WHO acronym for pandemic prevention, preparedness, and response. “One Health” refers to the broadening of pandemic response to potentially include things like farming, poverty, and climate change, which could either cause or exacerbate outbreaks, or impair peoples’ health in other ways.
“One Health is anything in the biosphere that affects human well-being in its current definition,” Bell said. Current terms being negotiated, he said, would not only broaden the scope of the WHO’s mandate but would also grant it authority to act when a pandemic “threat” is perceived, as opposed to an actual pandemic emergency.
“They are already putting in place a very broad surveillance mechanism,” Bell said. “They’re talking about two and a half billion dollars a year, which is three times the WHO budget just to run this. And this will look for any threats such as viral variant, which is [part of] nature, I mean, these happen all the time. Then they'll be able to say essentially, that these are potential threats, therefore we need to lock down a population.”
According to the GPMB’s Manifesto for Preparedness, the WHO must be “empowered with the responsibility, authority and accountability to fulfill its leadership role at the center of health emergency preparedness.” Among the top priorities, the manifesto stated, is that “access to medical countermeasures is based on need; resources, information and data are accessible to all; priorities are driven by the needs of people and communities and address gender equity.”
The Global Preparedness Monitoring Board was established in 2018 by the WHO and the World Bank, and is tasked with monitoring the world’s preparedness to respond to pandemics. It is “comprised of globally recognized leaders and experts from a wide range of sectors, including global health, veterinary epidemiology, environment, human rights, economics, law, gender, and development.”
In its first report in September 2019, the GPMB predicted a respiratory pandemic that would cause millions of deaths and immense damage to the world economy.