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A pandemic treaty, revised international health regulations, or both?

BACKGROUND: A special session of the World Health Assembly (WHA) will be convened in late 2021 to consider developing a WHO convention, agreement or other international instrument on pandemic preparedness and response – a so-called ‘Pandemic Treaty’. Consideration is given to this treaty as well as...

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Autores principales: Labonté, Ronald, Wiktorowicz, Mary, Packer, Corinne, Ruckert, Arne, Wilson, Kumanan, Halabi, Sam
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8572070/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34742296
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12992-021-00779-0
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author Labonté, Ronald
Wiktorowicz, Mary
Packer, Corinne
Ruckert, Arne
Wilson, Kumanan
Halabi, Sam
author_facet Labonté, Ronald
Wiktorowicz, Mary
Packer, Corinne
Ruckert, Arne
Wilson, Kumanan
Halabi, Sam
author_sort Labonté, Ronald
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: A special session of the World Health Assembly (WHA) will be convened in late 2021 to consider developing a WHO convention, agreement or other international instrument on pandemic preparedness and response – a so-called ‘Pandemic Treaty’. Consideration is given to this treaty as well as to reform of the International Health Regulations (IHR) as our principal governing instrument to prevent and mitigate future pandemics. MAIN BODY: Reasons exist to continue to work with the IHR as our principal governing instrument to prevent and mitigate future pandemics. All WHO member states are party to it. It gives the WHO the authority to oversee the collection of surveillance data and to issue recommendations on trade and travel advisories to control the spread of infectious diseases, among other things. However, the limitations of the IHR in addressing the deep prevention of future pandemics also must be recognized. These include a lack of a regulatory framework to prevent zoonotic spillovers. More advanced multi-sectoral measures are also needed. At the same time, a pandemic treaty would have potential benefits and drawbacks as well. It would be a means of addressing the gross inequity in global vaccine distribution and other gaps in the IHR, but it would also need more involvement at the negotiation table of countries in the Global South, significant funding, and likely many years to adopt. CONCLUSIONS: Reform of the IHR should be undertaken while engaging with WHO member states (and notably those from the Global South) in discussions on the possible benefits, drawbacks and scope of a new pandemic treaty. Both options are not mutually exclusive.
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spelling pubmed-85720702021-11-08 A pandemic treaty, revised international health regulations, or both? Labonté, Ronald Wiktorowicz, Mary Packer, Corinne Ruckert, Arne Wilson, Kumanan Halabi, Sam Global Health Commentary BACKGROUND: A special session of the World Health Assembly (WHA) will be convened in late 2021 to consider developing a WHO convention, agreement or other international instrument on pandemic preparedness and response – a so-called ‘Pandemic Treaty’. Consideration is given to this treaty as well as to reform of the International Health Regulations (IHR) as our principal governing instrument to prevent and mitigate future pandemics. MAIN BODY: Reasons exist to continue to work with the IHR as our principal governing instrument to prevent and mitigate future pandemics. All WHO member states are party to it. It gives the WHO the authority to oversee the collection of surveillance data and to issue recommendations on trade and travel advisories to control the spread of infectious diseases, among other things. However, the limitations of the IHR in addressing the deep prevention of future pandemics also must be recognized. These include a lack of a regulatory framework to prevent zoonotic spillovers. More advanced multi-sectoral measures are also needed. At the same time, a pandemic treaty would have potential benefits and drawbacks as well. It would be a means of addressing the gross inequity in global vaccine distribution and other gaps in the IHR, but it would also need more involvement at the negotiation table of countries in the Global South, significant funding, and likely many years to adopt. CONCLUSIONS: Reform of the IHR should be undertaken while engaging with WHO member states (and notably those from the Global South) in discussions on the possible benefits, drawbacks and scope of a new pandemic treaty. Both options are not mutually exclusive. BioMed Central 2021-11-06 /pmc/articles/PMC8572070/ /pubmed/34742296 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12992-021-00779-0 Text en © The Author(s) 2021 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) ) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.
spellingShingle Commentary
Labonté, Ronald
Wiktorowicz, Mary
Packer, Corinne
Ruckert, Arne
Wilson, Kumanan
Halabi, Sam
A pandemic treaty, revised international health regulations, or both?
title A pandemic treaty, revised international health regulations, or both?
title_full A pandemic treaty, revised international health regulations, or both?
title_fullStr A pandemic treaty, revised international health regulations, or both?
title_full_unstemmed A pandemic treaty, revised international health regulations, or both?
title_short A pandemic treaty, revised international health regulations, or both?
title_sort pandemic treaty, revised international health regulations, or both?
topic Commentary
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8572070/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34742296
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12992-021-00779-0
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