World Health Assembly's Secret Weapon to Prevent the Next Pandemic Will Blow Your Mind! #MustRead

 The World Health Organization (WHO) kicked off its annual meeting on Monday with ministers and other top envoys in hopes of strengthening global preparedness for the next pandemic after the devastating COVID-19.

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But the most ambitious project, adopting a pandemic “treaty”, has been put on hold for now after 2.5 years of efforts to produce a draft that could unite the countries failed last Friday, or within the deadline.

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus stressed that the failure to produce the draft was not a "failure" and this week's World Health Assembly could still plan future steps.

Although diplomats, health officials and activists are still working to produce a draft agreement, he predicted the meeting would be one of the most significant in WHO's 76-year history.

WHO officials and others are eager to capitalize on the momentum of concern generated by the coronavirus pandemic, with the risk that as more pandemics fade into history, the public and policymakers become less interested in preparing for future pandemics.

The basic premise is that pathogens that do not respect national borders require a unified response from all countries. But decision makers struggled to balance national interests with calls from WHO officials to think more broadly in the interests of humanity and equality.

So health ministers must now act and try to overcome fundamental differences, including how the world can share information about emerging pathogens and scarce resources such as vaccines and masks as demand skyrockets.

The meeting of the 194 member states of the UN health agency opened on Monday with a speech from Tedros and video comments from high-profile participants including International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.

The envoys will discuss global health issues including the impact of war in countries such as the Middle East, Sudan and Ukraine.

Rather than creating a pandemic treaty, the best way now to strengthen the international health architecture to fight cross-border outbreaks is through amendments to the nearly two-decade-old International Health Regulations, which countries have “agreed in principle to,” Tedros said last week.

These regulations focus on helping countries detect and respond to health emergencies.

For example, delegates present at the assembly could establish the concept of a “pandemic emergency” to develop and refine the complex Public Health Emergency of International Concern category , which is currently WHO's highest alert level for dangerous epidemics.

Terms like this can help provide information to the public at a time when confusion and uncertainty are rampant, such as during the COVID-19 outbreak.

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