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View of vials on a production line at the factory of British multinational pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) in Saint-Amand-les-Eaux, northern France, on December 3, 2020, where the adjuvant for Covid-19 vaccines will be manufactured. Francois Lo Presti/AFP via Getty Images hide caption The two-year effort to produce a global pandemic treaty did not meet its deadline. On Friday, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director general of the World Health Organization, announced that the negotiators – from the group’s 194 member nations – couldn’t find consensus in time for the World Health Assembly that starts next week.

The goal had been to draw up a document that could be adopted at the meeting and then sent to countries for ratification. But the sticking points – including the willingness of richer countries to share vaccines and treatments with less well-off countries in the Global South – could not be resolved in time. Nonetheless, Tedros holds out hope.



“The world still needs a pandemic treaty. Many of the challenges that caused the serious impact during COVID-19 still exist,” said Tedros. “So let's continue to try everything.

” Experts in global health expect that WHO will grant another six to 12 months for negotiators to complete their work – and resolve the sticking points. “It was a huge disappointment,” says Lawrence Gostin , a professor of global health law at Georgetown University, after learning about the delay. “But there is a strong a.

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