Journal Article

The WHO has ratified pandemic agreement: but what will it take to ensure equitable response for future pandemics?

Prainsack, Barbara, Archard, David, Pykett, Jessica, Antanavičiūtė, Marija, Straßheim, Holger

2026

Overview

On 20 May 2025, the World Health Organization (WHO) adopted the Pandemic Agreement at the World Health Assembly in Geneva. After nearly three years of negotiations and after failing to adopt it in 2024, this is a decisive step towards more combined efforts to address future pandemics. The final text of the treaty highlights the need for equitable access to pandemic-related health products and aims to improve the ability of international health regulators to guide countries during future pandemics. There is hope that by learning from mistakes made during the COVID-19 pandemic, the Agreement can be used to address global inequities and make globally equitable resource sharing the norm, preventing harmful practices, such as vaccine hoarding and barriers to data sharing. However, while the current Pandemic Agreement puts equitable access to surveillance, therapeutics, vaccines, and other pandemic-related products at the forefront, many important questions are yet to be answered. The authors of this paper draw attention to ethics preparedness efforts. The piece considers the importance of building the necessary infrastructure for the provision of ethical advice on health-related matters as part of the implementation phases of the WHO Pandemic Agreement to ensure that we learn from the mistakes made during the COVID-19 pandemic.

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis Group
• Subject: Ethics / ethics advice / pandemic preparedness / pandemic treaty / policy / WHO