GENEVA, Nov 4, 2024 (BSS/AFP) - After over two years of talks, the World
Health Organization's 194 member states reconvened on Monday to secure a deal
on tackling future pandemics amid new outbreaks of mpox and other diseases.

Hopes are high of wrapping up a landmark accord over the coming fortnight,
though the nuts and bolts on how to share pathogens and vaccines are set to
be worked out afterwards.

In December 2021, fearing a repeat of the devastation wrought by Covid-19 --
which killed millions of people, crippled health systems and crashed
economies -- countries agreed to draft an accord on pandemic prevention,
preparedness and response.

The emergence of a new strain of mpox, the deadly Marburg virus outbreak in
Rwanda and the spread of H5N1 bird flu in recent months have given
negotiators a jolt.

In its annual report issued in October, the Global Preparedness Monitoring
Board said the recent spillover of H5N1 to humans and the unfolding mpox
outbreak were "clear warnings".

"The high likelihood that they will spread further should be a wake-up call,"
it warned.

- Equity battle -

The pandemic agreement is being hammered out by the World Health
Organization's 194 member
states.

Many of the draft text's 37 articles were concluded during the 11 previous
rounds of talks.

The key outstanding section revolves around the sharing of pathogens detected
within countries, and subsequently of vaccines and other pandemic-fighting
products derived from that knowledge.

It has turned into a stand-off between wealthier nations where most of the
medicines are developed and poorer countries who felt cut adrift during the
Covid-19 pandemic.

The plan is therefore to defer thrashing out how the proposed Pathogen Access
and Benefit-Sharing System (PABS) would work in practice until after the
broader agreement has been concluded.

WHO director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that whatever countries
agreed, the accord had to prevent a repeat of the glaring inequalities
exposed by Covid-19.

"If the world has failed with one thing it was the equity issue," he told a
press conference on Friday.

"Africa was left behind then, and that should not happen," he said, calling
for increased local production of pandemic-fighting products in the global
south.

"Most of the things are addressed. There is already a middle ground for many
of the difficult issues. If there is a will, there is a way," he insisted.

- 'Diluted and deleted' -

Adding to the momentum, G20 health ministers met in Rio de Janeiro on
Thursday and voiced support for concluding an agreement.

"We reiterate our commitment to an instrument that is ambitious, balanced,
effective and fit-for-purpose, including equitable access to medical
countermeasures during pandemics," they said.

But Sangeeta Shashikant, the Third World Network NGO's intellectual property
and development coordinator, said many of the PABS proposals put forward by
developing countries had been "diluted and deleted".

"Across the board in the pandemic agreement, the feeling is there is really
no meaningful deliverable" that would overturn the inequities of Covid-19,
she told journalists.

The 12th round of talks comes after the world's biggest nature conservation
conference closed in Colombia on Saturday with no agreement on a roadmap to
ramp up funding for species protection.

The summit's biggest ask -- to lay out a detailed funding plan -- proved a
bridge too far, as poor and rich country blocs haggled.

- 'Sour taste' -

The Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response, headed by
former New Zealand prime minister Helen Clark and Liberian ex-president Ellen
Johnson Sirleaf, in May 2021 recommended creating a new pandemic treaty.

Clark warned last week that the major reforms needed had not been inked.

"It's not surprising the negotiations for the accord have run into a lot of
trouble, because the south sees the north as protecting its pharmaceutical
industries," she told London's Chatham House think-tank on Tuesday.

"All of this has left an incredibly sour taste between north and south."

Denis Mukwege, a 2018 Nobel Peace Prize winner, said the lessons of Covid-19
were being forgotten, citing how countries were stockpiling mpox vaccines
rather than flooding the front line in his native country, the Democratic
Republic of Congo.