The writer is a professor at University College London and chair of the World Health Organization’s Council on Health Economics for All
Although Covid-19 is no longer an official global health emergency, the virus is still with us and adding to the disease burden. Pandemics have changed the world forever: the new pandemic agreement currently being negotiated by WHO member states is proof of this. We need to be ready to tackle the next pathogen that poses this threat—one that could be more deadly than Covid-19—and prevent it from wrecking our lives.
However, leaked draft text of the agreement suggests that we may be on the verge of underestimating what we have learned over the past three years and squandering this opportunity to safeguard our future.In our final report, the World Health Organization’s Commission on the Economics of Health for All Believing that the cost of not acting now is greater than the cost of acting.
First, we need to work towards a new global financing mechanism.Second, innovation needs to be mutual benefit. Scientific information must be freely shared across borders and innovations, especially in medicine, must be used to ensure health equity for all.
Instead, governments in low- and middle-income countries have had to reinvent the wheel in key vaccine technologies. What they need is rapid technology transfer on reasonable terms from big drugmakers in rich countries.
These governments have experience dealing with epidemics and epidemics, and so do drugmakers. Their contribution to the global effort to combat Covid-19, including the sharing of biological samples for the common good, should not prevent them from benefiting from the technologies developed from the information they share. The Pandemic Protocol provides a path to correct these failures while preserving the sovereignty of each country.
Why is this important?During Covid we have seen vaccine apartheid Dividing the world, this is the pinnacle of an innovative governance system unsuited to a global pandemic. In almost all cases, the innovations were developed with substantial government investment and strong regulatory support. This includes advanced procurement agreements that allow pharmaceutical companies to conduct research without the risks typically faced by producers of new drugs. It also includes at least $31.9 billion for the U.S. government to develop, manufacture and purchase an mRNA Covid-19 vaccine. Yet the benefits of this research have been housed behind unscalable walls of intellectual property, in the service of profit rather than population health.
A global agreement currently being drafted must ensure that publicly funded R&D serves the common good. The leaked text shows that transparent disclosure of drug prices and conditions for data sharing and technology transfer will be voluntary. That would be a serious mistake — the same mistake has been made during the pandemic, when hundreds of millions of people around the world were unable to get a vaccine in time, partly in the hope of maximizing profits for a handful of companies. It’s not just about price, it’s also about the conditions of technology sharing: poor management of intellectual property.
We need an urgent, transformative shift in the way we approach financing—one that creates the fiscal space for much-needed health investment in developing countries. A pandemic deal needs to create a system to make real progress in preparing us for the future, a system that goes beyond traditional global health financing structures. It must be driven by knowledge sharing, inclusion, access and transparency.
Only through global policy, and financial and legal commitment from governments and international institutions such as the World Health Organization, can we prevent and prepare for the next pandemic. The agreement is an important step in that direction. However, if the commitment to managing innovation does not reflect the value of health for all, we risk taking several steps back.
We cannot continue with the outdated donor-beneficiary model that mistakenly treats prevention, preparedness and response as purely “development” projects. Pandemic agreements must establish that the imperatives, gaps, strengths and obligations to address global health threats – although varied from place to place – are common. Our collective responsibility to avoid a crisis that affects us all must come first.