On Wednesday, 26 January 2022, Knowledge Ecology International (KEI) delivered the following statement on a possible pandemic treaty at the 150th session of the World Health Organization’s Executive Board.
The WHO negotiations on a pandemic treaty are not a quick fix to the current pandemic, but they offer a much more comprehensive and potentially useful response going forward, including for the next pandemics.
In the days to come, negotiators should address policy failures that have accompanied the current pandemic response, and create a better global framework for cooperation, including the sharing of rights and know-how from government funded technologies, mandatory intellectual property exceptions, global norms for financing R&D in both the preparatory and crisis stages, and concrete obligations for transparency. The funding and management of clinical trials should be reformed so that the public has transparent and unbiased information on the relative effectiveness and safety of countermeasures. Regulatory pathways need to be more efficient in responding to emergencies.