Doubling Down: Ensuring a Transformative Pandemic Agreement

The Intergovernmental Negotiating Body (INB) process is approaching the May 2024 culmination, and it is time to ensure that the lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic are translated into a transformative, enforceable, and equitable pandemic agreement. Civil society needs to be heard during the pandemic agreement negotiations! 

Pandemic Action Network is hosting two community meetings on the pandemic agreement during INB8 to enable civil society voices to be heard during this critical phase of the negotiations. Join us on Wednesday, Feb. 21 and Thursday, Feb. 22 from 12:45-13:45pm CET / 06:45-07:45am ET. More details are included in the registration form. For those wishing to be in the room on Feb. 21 and Feb 22, the deadline for in-person registration is Tuesday, Feb. 13 at noon CET.

In a letter led by Pandemic Action Network, Member States are urged to ensure the final pandemic agreement text incorporates and reaffirms existing human rights obligations, including the right to the highest attainable standard of health and the right to enjoy the benefits of scientific progress and its applications in particular. In addition, the final text must:

• Establish a global system that guarantees end-to-end, timely, affordable, and equitable access to medical countermeasures and other lifesaving tools for all countries
• Commit to securing additional, long-term, and sustainable financing for pandemic prevention, preparedness, and response (pandemic PPR)
• Strengthen accountability to drive action, including establishing a fully independent monitoring committee
• Establish clear and enforceable obligations to prevent zoonotic disease outbreaks, spillovers, and spillbacks; address the drivers of pathogen spillover via the One Health approach; and provide the support needed for countries to deliver on these obligations
• Meaningfully prioritize gender-responsive pandemic PPR to advance equity across this agenda

Leaders must seize this generational opportunity to produce a strong and meaningful agreement that shifts the status quo and redefines health. 

Read the full letter.