The WHO chief said recent outbreaks of Ebola and hantavirus show why countries must finalise the agreement without delay.
Deadly outbreaks such as the Ebola Bundibugyo virus currently spreading in Africa show the urgent need to complete an international pandemic treaty, World Health Organization (WHO) chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Monday during a negotiating meeting in Geneva.
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Wealthy countries and developing nations remain at odds over how the Pandemic Treaty, adopted last year as a framework to handle future COVID-like pandemics, will work in practice.
When countries adopted the Pandemic Agreement in May 2025, they left out the tricky issue of how its key mechanism would operate, to get the deal over the line.
The agreement’s Pathogen Access and Benefit-Sharing (PABS) system governs how pathogens with pandemic potential can be obtained, and how products derived from them, such as vaccines, tests and treatments, are distributed.
Pointing to several recent deadly disease outbreaks caused by the new Ebola strain and hantavirus, Tedros stressed that completing a pandemic treaty was "about protecting people".
"A pathogen threat anywhere can become a threat everywhere, to people of every country," he said, according to a written version of his statement. "The outbreak of hantavirus earlier this year, and the ongoing Ebola epidemic in DRC remind us of this threat."
Tedros highlighted that, during the COVID-19 pandemic, “the world developed vaccines in record time, but too many countries were left waiting while others secured far more than they needed”.
“Timely access to vaccines and affordable medicines was a recurring concern raised by Member States during my meetings across all six WHO regions”, Hans Kluge, WHO Regional Director for Europe, currently on special leave as he is running for WHO Director-General.
“That is why we need a system where countries can quickly share pathogen samples and data, while ensuring that the vaccines, tests and treatments developed from them are shared fairly,” he said in a post on X, adding that the world cannot afford to repeat the inequalities we witnessed during the COVID-19 pandemic.
