The World Health Organization (WHO) has started debating a draft “pandemic treaty” to address the failures of the Covid-19 response and prevent another global crisis.
The ongoing negotiations, which have been taking place in Geneva (which the pharma lobby describes as “the global health capital of the world”) are essentially a proxy war between corporate interests aiming to entrench intellectual property protections for profit and the WHO and its Global South allies seeking greater accountability and transparency from wealthy governments that enable pharma profiteering.
Though it acknowledges the “catastrophic failure” of the pandemic response and recognises the “threats” of intellectual property restrictions, the treaty falls far short of what is needed.
