Building a Better Global Response to Disease

CLAIM: An accord will give WHO total authority in future public health emergencies, including allowing WHO to establish vaccine passports, regulate travel, require lockdowns, infringe on civil liberties, and interfere on matters of national sovereignty.

FACT: Members of WHO are sovereign countries, and participation in any instrument is voluntary. The terms of an agreement will be decided by those countries through a long, collaborative negotiation process, not by WHO.

CLAIM: WHO is seeking “police power” to enforce the terms of any new pandemic instrument.

FACT: Any notion of a WHO-led force to ensure compliance would fall outside of the scope of the organization’s mandate and constitution.

CLAIM: Isn’t a pandemic accord just another version of International Health Regulations?

FACT: Many conversations about the pandemic accord raise the topic of something called International Health Regulations (IHR).

Since 1969, the IHR — adopted by the World Health Assembly, the governing body of WHO — has served as essential, legally-binding guidance for its 196 signatories on detecting and reporting public health emergencies. Because it’s regularly reviewed and updated, some groups have shared concerns that a parallel pandemic accord process could contradict, undermine, or duplicate the IHR.

It’s important to note that the process of updating the IHR is happening concurrently with the process of developing a more specific protocol for pandemic preparedness and response. Together, these agreements will offer a continuum of multilateral and country-based action to prepare for, identify, and prevent future pathogens that threaten humanity. So rather than compete with each other, both resources will reinforce the guidance of the other to ensure that countries are benefitting from the very best thinking and latest guidance.

With a presence in more than 150 countries and the trust of governments around the world, WHO is uniquely positioned to both collect new evidence emerging from anywhere in the world and use it to develop, refine, and disseminate technical and normative guidance essential to battling COVID-19 and a suite of other diseases.

In fact, from the outset of COVID-19, WHO emphasized the primacy of testing, isolation, and contact tracing, as well as distributing million of tests, which research shows was essential to reducing mortality.

WHO is the only agency in the world capable of coordinating unprecedented global trials on therapeutics and vaccines, including the groundbreaking scope of the Solidarity Trial, with more than 100 countries participating. As important, the Solidarity Trial will reduce the amount of time it takes for a drug trial to determine effectiveness by 80%.

WHO is the only organization with the technical expertise and capacity, global membership, credibility, access, and trust to launch pandemic and disease awareness campaigns throughout the world. Billions of people have access to WHO’s evidence-based information in dozens of languages.

At least 133 countries rely on WHO to globally procure millions of pieces of personal protective equipment and other vital health commodities like tests and testing supplies, including more than 4.5 million items of vital PPE.

WHO is working to preposition manufacturing capacity and distribution channels to ensure less resourced countries and vulnerable populations have access to vaccines and treatments as quickly as possible and at a fair price.

WHO has a particularly important role to play in helping poorer countries fight disease and epidemics. Out-of-control outbreaks in the developing world threaten the U.S. and could spark multiple waves of disease.

Global partnerships and U.S. leadership within WHO ensure that nations cannot simply go it alone to advance policies that are inconsistent with U.S. interests or global health. U.S. leadership has also facilitated dialogue and collaboration between WHO and U.S. civil society and the private sector, making sure a range of American perspectives are taken into account in setting global health policies.

WHO has consistently stated its readiness to support independent investigations — including into the origins of COVID-19 and the agency’s global health response — in an effort to learn more and improve the organization’s role in future health emergencies. As a member organization, the World Health Assembly is the appropriate forum to raise resolutions that guide the actions of the health body based on the consensus of the group.

The world — and the U.S. — needs WHO to keep disease at bay. Without WHO, the world would experience a surge in polio cases. The Global Polio Eradication Initiative is embedded in WHO and has decreased the number of wild poliovirus cases by 99.9% since 1988, from an estimated 350,000 cases to just 176 in 2019. WHO leads monitoring, immunization, and technical support, and is able to reach remote areas in countries where polio still exists.

Moreover, the world would compromise the global infectious disease early warning system. Early detection allows countries to stop disease outbreaks at their source before they spread farther and become deadlier and more expensive to contain.

The U.S. would also lose access to influenza data that protects Americans. Since 2004, the U.S. has helped build a global network of WHO flu centers, buying lab equipment, and training scientists. The centers, located in more than 100 countries, collect samples from sick people, isolate viruses, and search for new viruses that could cause an epidemic or pandemic. The CDC houses one of five WHO Collaborating Centers that collect these virus samples, while the FDA runs one of the four WHO regulatory labs that help vaccine makers determine the correct amount of antigen, which triggers the immune response, to include in vaccines.