On April 16, 2025, WHO Member States reached consensus on a draft agreement for consideration at the upcoming World Health Assembly in May. The proposal aims to strengthen global collaboration on prevention, preparedness and response to future pandemic threats. It will be submitted to the World Health Assembly in May for consideration.
Nations still work together
After more than three years of intensive negotiations, WHO Member States took a major step forward in efforts to make the world safer from pandemics by forging a draft agreement. The proposal aims to strengthen global collaboration on prevention, preparedness and response to future pandemic threats. Successful negotiations and significant progress concluded 13 formal rounds of meetings, nine of which were extended, and many informal and intersessional negotiations on various aspects of the draft agreement, led by the Intergovernmental Negotiating Body (INB). The draft will be presented to the Seventy-eighth World Health Assembly for its consideration adoption by WHO Member States of a resolution (A78/10). WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus emphasized this historical moment: In reaching consensus on the Pandemic Agreement, nations of the World put in place a generational accord to make the world safer and demonstrated that multilateralism is alive: “Nations can still work together to find common ground and a shared response to shared threats.”
PREZODE commitments
Among major steps, key elements of the proposed agreement include a commitment to a One Health approach to pandemic prevention. With several partners, especially Four Paws, Johns Hopkins, and WCS, as well as many others, PREZODE, as Relevant Stakeholder (annexe E- equivalent to observer status) to the INB, was committed to the process. Our efforts to highlight the significance and co-benefits of integrating Prevention and One Health into the draft have been heard. In the latest stages of the discussions, advocacy was run through:
- A joint Webinar, with Four Paws, Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and Wildlife Conservation Society highlighting the existing efforts on One Health governance and operationalization of prevention activities already in place in countries worldwide.
- 8 Statements delivered through the different INB sessions, calling the WHO Member States to make primary prevention and the One Health approach prevention a concrete priority in the pandemic agreement.
- A side event in Geneva co-hosted on April 7, 2025, inviting all the negotiators to a consensus on the matter (photo).
An Intergovernmental Working Group (IGWG) to negotiate the Annex of the Agreement (on Pathogen Access and Benefit-Sharing System – article 12) and to prepare proposals for the first session of the Conference of the Parties of the WHO Pandemic Agreement should be established in the coming months. PREZODE will remain a key stakeholder in this process