On 25-26 January, the Executive Board (EB) of the World Health Organization (WHO) considered the public health implications of the Nagoya Protocol on access and benefit sharing, a treaty under the Convention Biological Diversity. The EB agenda item stemmed from World Health Assembly (WHA) Decision 72(13) taken in 2019. With recent pandemics and major epidemics including novel influenza, Zika, Ebola, and obviously COVID-19, the issue of access and benefit sharing for pathogens is taking on increasing importance on the WHA agenda. The WHA itself will consider the same agenda item when it meets in May.
The EB discussion exhibited a tendency toward North-South divisions, with many developing countries emphasizing national sovereignty over genetic resources and the need for benefit sharing when pathogens and sequence information are collected and provided to the international community, particularly when they are then used to develop commercial products. In contrast, Northern countries tended to gloss over the benefit sharing issue, instead preferring to speak of their insistence that they always are given prompt access to pathogens and sequence information, particularly in unusual disease outbreaks.
The EB talks concluded with remarks from WHO officials that seemed out of step with the positions expressed by many Member States, and unresponsive to the concerns many developing countries raised, particularly in regard to WHO’s excessive focus on pathogen access over consideration of benefit sharing. These comments, in some cases, have raised concerns that the WHO leadership is not being accurately advised about the Nagoya Protocol and access and benefit sharing issues.
During the EB discussion, many Member States also asked questions about the WHO Director-General’s “BioHub” for potentially pandemic disease samples, proposed for creation in Geneva. The BioHub, which WHO formerly referred to as a “bio-bank”, has raised numerous questions about access and benefit sharing related to the Nagoya Protocol. In his reply to the questions, the Director-General claimed the Nagoya Protocol is problematic, and he incorrectly suggested that it mandates long delays in shipment of viruses, and requires negotiation for each one. The reply, whose conclusion contradicted the stated views of many Member States, raised questions about the quality and impartiality of the advice the Director-General is receiving from staff.
The full report of the statements of Member States and the response of the WHO Secretariat is available here. – Third World Network
https://twn.my/title2/briefing_papers/twn/WHO%20Executive%20Board%20discusses%20Nagoya%20Protocol%20and%20proposed%20BioHub.pdf
