WHO adopts landmark pandemic agreement

The UN health agency yesterday 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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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 Organization's decision-making annual assembly adopted the plan yesterday at its Geneva headquarters.

"It's an historic day," WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said after the vote.

The text of the agreement was finalised by consensus last month, following multiple rounds of tense negotiations.