WHO adopts pandemic agreement

THE World Health Organization’s member states on Tuesday adopted a landmark Pandemic Agreement on tackling future health crises, after more than three years of negotiations sparked by the shock of Covid-19.

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

"With this agreement we're better prepared for a pandemic than any generation in history,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at the decision-making annual assembly in Geneva.

The text of the agreement was finalised by consensus last month following several rounds of tense negotiations. The US pulled out of those talks after US President Donald Trump's decision to start withdrawing his country from the WHO.

“The world is safer today thanks to the leadership, collaboration and commitment of our member states to adopt the historic WHO Pandemic Agreement,” Tedros said.