Three years after the World Health Organization (WHO) declared an end to the Covid-19 global health emergency, member states remain deadlocked on the question of how the world will share the pathogen samples and genetic data needed to develop vaccines and treatments for the next pandemic.
Negotiations on the Pathogen Access and Benefit Sharing (PABS) system, the unfinished annex of the WHO Pandemic Agreement, again ended inconclusively at the 79th World Health Assembly in Geneva.
Developed countries have pressed for rapid, and in some formulations anonymous, sharing of pathogen materials and digital sequence information into the global system, while developing countries argue this would oblige them to surrender pathogen data with no enforceable guarantee that vaccines and treatments built on that data would be made available to them.
The PABS system is the last-mile annex before the Pandemic Agreement can be opened for signature and ratification. Developing countries are seeking enforceable standard contracts and user registration to resolve unresolved issues including vaccine, therapeutic and diagnostic set-asides during public health emergencies of international concern.
