Nations threw their weight behind a new U.N. political declaration that calls for more efforts to prepare for and try to prevent future pandemics, but offers little that might shake up the status quo.
Still, the World Health Organization hailed the final text as a "historic" commitment to working together against future pandemics even though it is legally non-binding. U.N. envoys from Israel and Morocco took the lead in the negotiations.
The United Nations General Assembly's President Dennis Francis, a career diplomat from Trinidad and Tobago, approved the measure on Wednesday with no objections from the world body's 193 member nations.
The declaration urges the world "to implement coherent and robust national, regional and global actions, driven by science and the need to prioritize equity and the respect for human rights."
It also demands that nations "strengthen pandemic prevention, preparedness and response, and fully address the direct and indirect consequences of future pandemics."
Globally, there have been 770 million confirmed cases of COVID-19 including almost 7 million deaths reported to WHO, and 13 billion vaccine doses administered. But some new variants are spreading fast and mutating.
'A collective security threat'
WHO's Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus noted four months already have passed since he declared COVID-19 was no longer a global health emergency, but history shows it will not be the last pandemic.
"This virus touched every person on the planet in some way. It stole lives and livelihoods, and caused massive social and economic upheaval. It exposed and exacerbated vast inequities and wide cracks in our defences," said Tedros.
"The question we all face is whether we will be ready when the next one arrives. As leaders, we have a collective responsibility to make sure we are ready," he said. "The political declaration you have just agreed today is a commitment that together, we will live up to our responsibility."
Aggrey Aluso, director of the Pandemic Action Network's Africa region, said millions of lives and tens of trillions of dollars would have been saved had world leaders heeded the lessons of the past and prioritized pandemic preparedness.
"Pandemics are a collective security threat that require independent monitoring and continued vigilance and oversight, reviewing global progress on an annual basis, as we do for the global threat of climate change," Aluso said.
"COVID-19 brought to light dire inequities both within and between countries," he said, calling on global leaders to adopt an international pandemic treaty and to update the International Health Regulations that already are legally binding on 196 nations. "The next pandemic will not wait."
