The AIDS Healthcare Foundation and some civil society organisations have called for a readjustment of the current draft of the WHO pandemic agreement, particularly in developing nations.

They specifically called for the readjustment of the World Health Organisation pandemic agreement draft to strengthen the international community’s ability to detect and respond to future pandemic threats in developing nations.

They made the call while addressing journalists in Abuja before finalising the WHO agreement Draft in May 2024.

Echey Ijezie, AHF country programme director, said the proposed text had been significantly watered down through the negotiation process and is filled with platitudes, anaemic in obligations, and devoid of any accountability.

“We expressed profound concern that developed nations have vehemently defended the private interest of pharmaceutical companies over the collective common interest of achieving global health security in a sustainable and equitable manner.

“Such disregard has been observed in the proposed compromise for the WHO Pathogen Access and Benefit-Sharing System, which the Lancet has described as not only ‘shameful, unjust, and inequitable’ but also ‘ignorant’,” he said.

Mr Ijezie added that to ensure its objectivity and effectiveness, the agreement should consider establishing an independent oversight body that is “politically, financially, technically and operationally independent of the WHO and donors.”

“Compliance, however, has been largely ignored by all parties and brushed under the rug throughout the negotiations. This is reflected in the current text, which does not mention the word compliance even once. To this end, we echo the concerns of the Panel for a Global Public Health Convention that the idea of a Compliance and Implementation Committee should not have been dropped from the text,” he said.

He added that the current text did not include effective engagement with CSOs and other non-governmental actors in the agreement.

Abdulkadir Ibrahim, the national coordinator of the Network of People Living with HIV/AIDS (NEPWHAN), noted the role of CSOs as critical partners in global responses to pandemics and related issues.

Mr Ibrahim said, “We are calling on WHO to strongly and urgently restore the position of the civil society with clear engagement and define the core role that the CSOs will put in place as we move ahead in putting the agenda for the pandemic preparedness.

“The value it will add will help in demand creation to sensitise, educate and empower people with knowledge about some of these things and what happened in the past, where we are and where we should be going.”

Also, Rommy Mom, the president of Lawyers Alert, said pandemic responses should be “rights-based” so the world can implement rights policies, especially in the global south.

Mr Mom called for compliance and monitoring, noting that “when we approach the issues of pandemics, low-income countries find it difficult to access drugs because people can’t afford them.”

He added, “But if we look at it from a human rights angle, people should have access to lifesaving medications.”

Hauwa Mustapha, deputy national chairperson of the Alliance for COVID-19 and Beyond and focal person for climate change at the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), explained that pandemics do not occur overnight.

Ms Mustapha said, “One of the key processes that leads to some of the health pandemics we witness in the world is climate change. So it is important for us, while addressing the pandemic as an immediate emergency, to also engage the causative factors, which is climate change and specifically about what we produce and consume.”

Amber Itohan-Erinmwinhe, executive secretary of the Nigerian Network of Religious Leaders Living with and Affected by HIV/AIDS (NINERELA+), suggested that the core role of CSOs should be repositioned and re-defined in the engagement on pandemic responses.

MChizoba Ogbeche, vice-president (Zone D) of the Nigeria Association of Women Journalists (NAWOJ), stressed the need to protect women and children against pandemics or any harm.

(NAN)