PABS is considered crucial by developing states, particularly in Africa, where many countries felt cut adrift in the scramble for COVID-19 vaccines.
However, there are nuances between their positions. Some emerging economies like South Africa want technology transfers, while the poorest countries are focusing primarily on access to healthcare products.
Adeel Mumtaz Khokhar, from Pakistan’s mission, said the negotiations had been “quite challenging” but “we remain hopeful”.
“Licensing, technology transfer and broader capacity building of your health system remain a big point of contention,” he said.
Anonymous access?
The treaty already says participating pharmaceutical companies should make available 20 percent of their real-time production of vaccines, tests and treatments to the WHO for redistribution, with at least half as a donation and the rest “at affordable prices”.
However, the details remain to be defined in the PABS annex, as do the terms of access to health data and tools outside pandemics.
NGOs and developing countries want to impose mandatory rules for laboratories to ensure poor countries receive vaccines.
“During the Ebola outbreaks, samples from African patients led to treatments developed without such obligations,” said Olena Zarytska of the medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF).
The result, she said, was limited supplies in Africa and stockpiles in the United States, which, under President Donald Trump, has withdrawn from the WHO.
Related
Developing countries also want a user registration and tracking system for the PABS database, while developed countries, “basically Germany, Norway and Switzerland”, advocate for maintaining anonymous access, said K M Gopakumar, senior researcher with the Third World Network.
Anonymous access would make it “impossible” to track who is using pathogen information, what for, and whether they are sharing the derived benefits, 100 non-governmental organisations, including Oxfam, said in a joint letter to the WHO.
“In practice, this means that genetic resources originating in developing countries can be accessed, commercialised, and exploited with complete impunity,” the letter said.