Pandemic talks weigh two pathogen sharing models

The seventh round of negotiations for the World Health Organization’s Pandemic Agreement ended Friday with two largely opposing proposals for a pathogen access and benefit-sharing (PABS) system on the table. Africa’s bloc backed a “federated” model, while the European Union and its developed-country allies proposed a “hybrid” model. The PABS annex is the last outstanding piece of the agreement, meant to govern how dangerous pathogens are shared during health emergencies and how any medical products derived from them are distributed.

Federated model relies on national and regional nodes

Algeria, speaking for the WHO Africa region plus Egypt, Somalia, and Sudan — known as the Africa Plus Group — described the federated model as “architecture built around sovereign national and regional nodes, interconnected through a WHO-hosted metadata index and catalogue with unique, persistent identifiers, ensuring end-to-end traceability of biological materials and pathogen sequence information.”

Under this system, every party getting access to pathogen information could be tracked throughout the network. The delegation said at the closing session that the approach “conditions access on binding benefit-sharing commitments at the point of use, and treats digital sequence information and physical materials with parity.” In practice, that means countries or manufacturers that want pathogen data would need to sign contracts promising to share any resulting vaccines, treatments, or diagnostics.

Its representative added that African capitals were still consulting on design features to “give practical effect to the federated model” and hoped to return with “firm compositions and concrete textual proposals.” In an apparent jab at the EU’s alternative, Algeria said the model “offers a more balanced and sustainable approach than models that rely on centralised infrastructures, dilute access conditionalities, or leave open parallel channels that may perpetuate the status quo that failed during COVID.”

EU’s hybrid system mixes mandatory and voluntary measures

The European Union formally tabled its “hybrid” proposal at the Intergovernmental Working Group (IGWG) conducting the talks, though it had been discussed for months. The hybrid model combines mandatory and voluntary elements: a global WHO-controlled PABS system working through the WHO-Coordinated Laboratory Network (WCLN) with some benefit-sharing commitments, alongside national processes where countries can share pathogen material with groups outside the formal system under mutually agreed terms.

The two models reflect fundamentally different philosophies about control and transparency. The federated approach gives developing countries more oversight and traceability, while the hybrid preserves flexibility for researchers and companies that prefer bilateral arrangements.

WHO Director General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus acknowledged the tension. He said that at the start of the week, “access and benefit-sharing started feeling like two sides of an argument” but by the end, “more of us now start to see them again as two halves of one promise.” Tedros added: “I will not pretend the remaining issues are small. Real gaps remain, and they deserve the same seriousness in the next session that they have received in this one.” He also noted that “many members” had told him finishing the annex this year is possible, urging delegates to “continue to aim for that.”

Negotiators depart as talks enter a critical phase

The IGWG will reconvene from 14 to 19 September without several key figures. Harpur chaired his final meeting this week. Heywood, who served as vice-chair for five years, told the room that her baby had been six months old when the pandemic agreement talks started and was now five-and-a-half years old. “There aren’t many left now here who were in this room, masked and distanced, when we started this process,” she said.

“Every one of us knows why we’re here, and how important it is to complete the pandemic agreement and get it into force,” Heywood added. She urged delegates to frequently ask themselves what more they could be doing towards common understanding, who they could reach out to, and what conversations they could initiate.