WHO pandemic pact stalls over sharing

The World Health Organization’s pandemic agreement is not fully moving into force because countries still have not settled the part covering pathogen access and benefit-sharing. On May 1, WHO said member states had agreed they needed more time to finalize the Pathogen Access and Benefit Sharing, or PABS, annex, which is a required part of the broader agreement. WHO says that annex is meant to set the rules for how pathogens are shared and how resulting benefits are distributed in a future health emergency. The dispute has left the core trade-off of the post-COVID negotiations unfinished as WHO also manages an Ebola emergency in Central Africa. ### Why is one annex holding up the whole pact? The WHO pandemic agreement was adopted by the World Health Assembly on May 20, 2025, but it cannot open for signature until the PABS annex is adopted. The House of Commons Library said the annex is described in Article 12 of the agreement, and WHO’s own explainer says the full agreement becomes open for countries to sign and ratify only after that annex is approved. (who.int) Article 12 matters because it governs the system for sharing pathogens with pandemic potential and the benefits that come from using them. In practice, that means countries are negotiating who gets access to samples, sequence information, vaccines, treatments, diagnostics and other products that may be developed from those materials. WHO has described the PABS system as a key part of the agreement adopted in 2025. (commonslibrary.parliament.uk) ### What are countries fighting over in the PABS talks? WHO’s May 1 statement said member states had made progress but needed additional time to finalize a framework for a “better, more equitable” response to future pandemics. The language points to the main divide described in reporting on the talks: lower-income countries want firmer guarantees that sharing pathogen samples will translate into access to vaccines, medicines and other countermeasures, while wealthier countries and manufacturers want rapid access to those samples for research and response. (who.int) The bargaining history behind that split runs through the COVID-19 pandemic, when many poorer countries argued they shared data and supported global surveillance but were pushed to the back of the line for vaccines and treatments. The current annex is intended to turn that political argument into rules, but WHO has not yet published a final text that bridges the competing demands. WHO’s November 2025 update said countries had only begun discussing the proposed draft annex text at that stage. (who.int) ### What does the current Ebola outbreak have to do with this? On May 17, 2026, WHO said an Ebola epidemic caused by Bundibugyo virus in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda had been determined to be a public health emergency of international concern. WHO said there are currently no approved Bundibugyo virus-specific vaccines or therapeutics, underscoring the stakes in how samples, research and resulting products are handled during an outbreak. (who.int) Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the WHO director-general, said on May 15 that WHO experts were in Ituri working with Congolese health authorities, and on May 19 he said he had declared the Ebola emergency before convening the Emergency Committee. Those statements placed the agency in the position of responding to a live cross-border outbreak while member states were still negotiating the rules for future pathogen sharing. (who.int) ### So where do the negotiations go from here? WHO’s Intergovernmental Working Group was set up to draft and negotiate the PABS annex as a priority, and its website says the outcome of that work will be submitted to the Seventy-ninth World Health Assembly in 2026. The same WHO timeline lists a seventh IGWG meeting in July 2026 and an eighth in September 2026, both still marked to be confirmed. (who.int) The practical next step is straightforward. Countries now continue negotiating the annex rather than signing the broader agreement, and the treaty process remains incomplete until the World Health Assembly adopts the PABS text. WHO’s May 1 release said member states had agreed to extend the negotiations for that purpose. (who.int 1) (who.int 2)