WHO Adopts Landmark Pandemic Agreement

The UN health agency on May 20 adopted a landmark Pandemic Agreement on tackling future health crises, struck after more than three years of negotiations sparked by the Covid-19 crisis.

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GENEVA -

The accord aims to prevent the disjointed response and international disarray that surrounded the Covid-19 pandemic, by improving global coordination and surveillance, and access to vaccines, in any future pandemics.

The World Health Organisation's (WHO) decision-making annual assembly adopted the plan on May 20 at its Geneva headquarters.

"It's a historic day," WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told AFP after the vote.

The text of the agreement was finalized by consensus in April, following multiple rounds of tense negotiations.

The US pulled out of those talks, following US President Donald Trump's decision to withdraw his country from the WHO, a process that takes one year to complete.