After more than three years of tough negotiations, the World Health Organization adopts the international agreement on pandemics

"With this agreement, we are better prepared to face a pandemic than any other generation in history," said WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

The text, adopted at the annual meeting of WHO member states, establishes earlier and more effective global coordination to prevent, detect, and respond to pandemic risks more quickly, following the collective failure to combat Covid-19, which has killed millions and devastated the global economy.

A success after often difficult and razor-thin negotiations, in a context of drastic cuts in the WHO budget, despite the fact that it is facing ever-increasing crises.

"Basically, what lies behind this agreement is this desire to have shared, transparent alert mechanisms that are more effective than what we experienced during Covid, and it is to reconcile the concepts of efficiency and fairness," noted French President Emmanuel Macron in a video message.

The United States, which has been largely absent from the negotiations in recent months following Donald Trump's decision to withdraw from the WHO, did not send delegates to the meeting. But in a video message, US Secretary of Health Robert Kennedy Jr. affirmed that the agreement "will encompass all the dysfunctions of the WHO's response to the Covid-19 pandemic," and urged other countries to "consider joining" the United States outside the WHO.

Like the Trump administration, he has adopted the theory that the Covid-19 pandemic was caused by a leak in a laboratory in the Chinese city of Wuhan, where the disease began to spread in December 2019.

A significant portion of the scientific community believes that the Covid-19 virus was transmitted from a bat to humans through an intermediary animal.

"The pandemic is over, but we still don't know how it started," Tedros said. "Understanding how it started remains important, both as a scientific and a moral imperative."

Affordable vaccines

The agreement aims to ensure equitable access to health products in the event of a pandemic. This issue was at the heart of many grievances among poorer countries during the Covid-19 pandemic, when they saw wealthy countries hoarding vaccine doses and testing. It also strengthens multisectoral surveillance and the "One Health" approach (human, animal, and environmental), and encourages investment in health systems.

In a video message, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi called the agreement "a shared commitment to fight future pandemics with greater cooperation while building a healthy planet."

At the heart of the agreement is a new mechanism to facilitate access to information on pathogens with pandemic potential. In exchange, participating companies will have to provide the WHO with "rapid access" to 20% of their vaccine, treatment, and test production in the event of a pandemic, including a "minimum of 10%" as a donation and the remaining percentage "at an affordable price."

Countries will be able to ratify the agreement once the practical details of the mechanism are finalized and adopted.

Elon Musk

During these three years of negotiations, the agreement has been fiercely opposed by those who believe that it will limit the sovereignty of states.

In 2023, billionaire Elon Musk, one of Donald Trump's inner circle, called on countries "not to cede their authority" in the face of the proposed international agreement aimed at combating pandemics.

The WHO then accused him of spreading "fake news".

The WHO chief had another reason to celebrate on Tuesday. In committee, countries approved a 20 percent increase in their assessed contributions to the WHO, as well as the organization's tightened budget for 2026-27, which stands at $4.2 billion.

"This is the second 20% increase in contributions to the WHO, the previous one having been decided as part of the 2024-25 budget," according to a statement from the organization.