Pandemic Action Network joins former co-chairs and members of The Independent Panel, the chair and members of The Elders, principals of the Panel for a Global Public Health Convention, and Spark Street Advisors in a joint letter calling all WHO Member States to take the historic opportunity within the ongoing pandemic accord negotiations and International Health Regulations amendments to ensure all countries are fully capable of responding to the next pandemic. 

Critical to the success of the Geneva processes:

• Commitment to an equitable system which ensures pandemic countermeasures, including personal protective equipment, medical oxygen, diagnostic tests, vaccines, and treatments, are available to protect those who are most vulnerable to illness and death where and when they are needed. This will be essential to protect people, contain pathogens and mitigate their impacts. All regions will require ownership and control of the ability to research, develop, manufacture and distribute such countermeasures so that all countries can access them.
• Commitment to sufficient, sustainable preparedness and surge finance to ensure that all countries can implement their obligations and protect their populations.
• Commitment to establishing an accountability mechanism, including fully independent monitoring, to ensure that Member States abide by their obligations. Such a mechanism should include positive incentives for compliance.

Read the joint letter.