President Lula (PT) and the World Health Organization (WHO) asked, this Monday (15), the G7 to gather the necessary “courage” to conclude the international treaty on the management of future pandemics.
Rich nations and developing countries diverge about the How to implement the pandemic agreementadopted last year.
In a statement, the director general of the WHO, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, and the Brazilian president demanded from the G7 leaders “political will at the highest level” to finalize a fundamental part that still remains pending.
“The world must finish what it started”, declared Tedros and Lula, who will participate as a guest at the G7 summit, taking place in the French city of Evian.
The mechanism yet to be defined is that of access to pathogens e benefit sharingresponsible for regulate the sharing of pathogens with pandemic potential ea subsequent distribution of the benefits generatedsuch as vaccines, tests and treatments.
The most complex part consists of decide how these benefits will be defined and distributed, how the system will be administered e How will equity be guaranteed?.
WHO Member State negotiators are expected to meet again between July 6 and 17 to continue talks.
“Instruct your negotiators to attend the July session prepared to conclude an agreement,” said the leaders, who acknowledged they needed the support of world leaders to reach a decisive breakthrough.
The agreement – whose objective is avoid a repeat of international chaos observed in the response to the covid-19 pandemic – cannot come into force until this annex is defined.
“Humanity promised itself, amid the harshness of that pain, that it would never again face a day like this without being prepared”, highlighted the two leaders, remembering that WHO estimates point to up to 20 million deaths from Covid-19.
They also highlighted that the International Monetary Fund estimated that the pandemic caused losses of more than 13 trillion dollars (R$66.62 trillion), while investments in early detection of outbreaks were insignificant.
According to scientists, there is almost a one in four chance of another pandemic occurring in the next decade.
In this context, Tedros and Lula stated that “this is not about charity, but about strategy” and that countries that share dangerous emerging pathogens must be able to trust that treatments will also reach their own population.
“A virus that is left to spread anywhere will, over time, affect the entire world,” they concluded.
